Stage Stop (Historic Rollinsville Stage Station)

The story

Eight years before Colorado became a state, while Ulysses S. Grant was taking office in Washington, the large red building at 60 Main Street was already collecting tolls from Butterfield Stage Coaches tackling the brutal grade over Rollins Pass. Erected in 1868 out of heavy hand-hewn post-and-beam timbers, it stood as a stage station and toll stop on the edge of the frontier. When a catastrophic fire swept through Rollinsville in 1950 and reduced virtually the entire town to cinders, this wooden structure survived intact.

Walk inside today and you're standing in front of a heavy mahogany back bar that reached Colorado after being hauled overland from Missouri. The building eventually converted into a mountain tavern, but local chatter suggests a few 19th-century occupants never truly vacated. Staff and regulars cite two persistent spirits: an unnamed young woman and a cowboy named Tom. Tom’s identity was confirmed when a visiting child pointed to an empty seat at the bar and casually asked about the man in the cowboy hat sitting there all by himself.

Tavern lore says you can keep Tom appeased by leaving a shot of whiskey out on the bar for him at closing time so he doesn't get ornery overnight. Outside of barroom sightings, security cameras inside have logged unexplainable orbs drifting past the floorboards in the off-hours. While a separate seasonal haunted walk-through takes over parts of the building in autumn, you don't need a Halloween ticket to feel the weight of the place—the bar operates year-round inside walls that outlasted the rest of the town.