Oddities & curiosities in Colorado Springs
Oddity shops, curiosity cabinets and taxidermy counters: 8 of the strangest small storefronts in Colorado Springs, Hart & Horn, Wise Roots Apothecary and The Cauldron among them. The kind of quirky, offbeat retail you leave with a story and a jar of something. They spread across Manitou Springs, Cripple Creek, West Colorado Springs, Castle Rock and 2 more areas, so two or three can make a whole afternoon. Every entry is hand-vetted against real sources — not scraped off a top-ten list or averaged out of crowd ratings.
-
Hart & Horn
Angela Hartshorn — a 25-year practicing witch who has kept a studio at the Manitou Art Center for 14 years — finally opened her own retail witch shop inside the MAC, stocked with handmade witch hats, cauldron candles, ethically sourced bones, custom poppets, and original tea blends.
-
Wise Roots Apothecary
Tucked inside a candlelit 1880s church on Canon Ave, this women-led herbalist shop crafts bespoke ceremonial experiences — divorce parties, coming-of-age rites, grief rituals — where your group makes an herbal creation to carry home.
-
The Cauldron
A tiny self-described "mystical curiosity shop" on Ruxton Ave packed with oddities, talismans, and the kind of objects you can't quite explain owning.
-
Old Homestead House Museum
An 1896 building in Cripple Creek that was once the gold camp's most exclusive brothel — run by legendary madam Pearl DeVere — and is now one of only three brothel museums in the country, its opulent parlors preserved down to the running water and electricity that made it elite.
-
Leechpit Records & Vintage
A beloved 20-year crate-digger's den on the west side — vinyl across every genre, vintage clothing, old toys and pop-culture oddities — run by a couple with 40 years of collecting between them, proudly 'keeping Colorado Springs lame.'
-
Wood Shark Trading Company
Founded in 2002 by Jim Corey and now run by his son Matt, Wood Shark Trading Company packs crystals, incense, Buddha statues, swords, knives, taxidermy, and genuine oddities into a single family-owned stall inside the Outlets at Castle Rock — a chaotic, deeply weird cabinet of curiosities in an otherwise ordinary outlet mall. Yelp shows it active as of March 2026.
-
Poplar Gulch Trail (from St. Elmo ghost town)
Almost everyone who reaches St. Elmo comes for the ghost town itself — the weathered 1880s storefronts, the chipmunks, the gift shop — and then turns around. Steps from that main street, an unmarked path slips uphill into the trees: 100% singletrack, climbing through aspen groves where the views of the southern Collegiate Peaks open up a little more with every switchback. It's the rare trail that starts inside a preserved mining town and ends in genuine high-altitude wilderness. Most people miss it because the town is the destination. Here, the town is the trailhead, and the silver-mining ruins are just the warm-up to the climb.
-
May Natural History Museum & Herkimer the Giant Beetle
A 16-foot bronze Hercules beetle guards a retro 1950s roadside museum holding one of the world's largest private collections of preserved tropical insects — 7,000+ beetles, spiders, and scorpions in a single-subject cabinet of curiosities.
Oddities & curiosities in Colorado Springs — FAQ
Which oddity shops & curiosities in Colorado Springs are the strangest?
Ranked by how strange they actually are: Wood Shark Trading Company, Hart & Horn and Old Homestead House Museum. Wood Shark Trading Company — Founded in 2002 by Jim Corey and now run by his son Matt, Wood Shark Trading Company packs crystals, incense, Buddha statues, swords, knives, taxidermy, and genuine oddities into a single family-owned stall inside the Outlets at Castle Rock — a chaotic, deeply weird cabinet of curiosities in an otherwise ordinary outlet mall.
Where in Colorado Springs are they?
Across Manitou Springs, Cripple Creek, West Colorado Springs, Castle Rock and St. Elmo / Chalk Creek and 1 more. Each listing gives the neighborhood and address so you can cluster a couple into one outing.
Is this a good weird date in Colorado Springs?
That's what the list is built for. Every entry has a specific move rather than a vague recommendation — at Wood Shark Trading Company, for instance: Browse the jumbled inventory together and pick one item each from opposite ends of the spectrum — say, a crystal for one partner and a blade or taxidermy piece for the other — then compare the staff's equally enthusiastic explanations for both; the contrast between metaphysical earnestness and knife-nerd enthusiasm makes for a genuinely memorable hour.
How were these oddity shops & curiosities chosen?
An agentic research system digs for the genuinely obscure — the spots even locals miss — and every one is verified against real sources before it makes the list. We deliberately skip the landmarks already on every Colorado Springs guide.