Anyone Hear of Phantom Canyon Road?

On Sunday, July 7th, Sean and I decided to do some Jeepin' around. Sean had found a paper in the office of the RV campground we were staying at that had a map of the Gold Belt Scenic Byway. We decided to take Shelf Road down to Canon City and take a short-cut over to Phantom Canyon Road, after stopping to see the Royal Gorge. Shelf Road offered unique sites of the area and a few old gold mine ruins. The road leads down to a camping/recreational area and a few miles further to the Garden Park Fossil Area, where some paleontologist have discovered very well preserved and semi-complete dinosaur skeletons, which are in many well known museums today.

The road takes you all the way into Canon City, where we were surprised to see a vibrant and thriving city and were wondering how this was possible in what seemed to be such a remote area. After lunch and passing by a Prison Museum that piqued our interest in town, we decided to do a little internet research on the area and found out the city is home to 13 federal/state prisons! Well...okay then, I guess we know now what the economy must thrive off of, other than tourists.

We decided to head over to the Royal Gorge next, only to soon find out that the bridge across was closed due to a recent wildfire that left extensive burn-scar. Here it is anyway.

I happened to see a sign for "Skyline Drive" that pointed toward the top of a nearby ridge. We decided to take this road, and we were both glad we did. Apparently the road was built by prison labor. The road goes absolutely nowhere and has no reason to exist, although the view was one of a kind and definitely worth it.

 
After that, we took Phantom Canyon Road, another dirt road, back to Cripple Creek. This road featured 2 old railroad tunnels (you could still see the soot on the top of the tunnel from the smoke stack of the engines), a steel bridge, and pretty views. Supposedly some of the old railroad tunnels that you drive through are haunted, but we did not see anything!