Manitou Springs, CO

The best vegetarian kitchen in the Pikes Peak region, running since the 1980s on a side street just off Manitou Avenue. The menu is roughly half vegetarian and builds around globally influenced dishes — Senegalese vegetable curry, French onion soup, vegan cinnamon roll. Voted Best Vegetarian Restaurant in Colorado Springs 2024.

A family-owned Italian restaurant on Manitou Avenue that has been the neighborhood's reliable pizza-and-pasta anchor for over two decades. Hand-tossed pizzas, daily-made dough, house sauces, and a menu broad enough for groups with varied preferences. The patio seating along the creek is the prime spot in good weather.

A scratch-kitchen burger bar on Manitou Avenue with internationally inspired burger builds — Korean BBQ, green chile, chimichurri — and a creek-side patio that locals rate as the best outdoor dining spot in town. Everything is house-made, including sauces and buns.

A creek-side bistro on Manitou Avenue run by professional chefs doing genuine farm-to-table cooking for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The Parmesan-crusted chicken tenders and tuna salad sandwiches anchor the midday menu; the dinner program steps up with craft cocktails and a curated wine list. The patio faces Fountain Creek.

A Nepalese-North Indian restaurant on Manitou Avenue with a menu spanning momos, butter chicken, biriyani, and korma. Rated 4.5 on TripAdvisor and 4.8 on Restaurant Guru. The owner's personal hospitality is a recurring theme in reviews — this is a one-family operation and it shows in the attention.

The town's own craft brewery on Manitou Avenue, with 18 taps including house and guest beers, a solid burger program, and a local-gathering-spot vibe. Gluten-free food options available. Rated 4.3 on TripAdvisor across 760-plus reviews — the most-reviewed restaurant in Manitou Springs.

A small counter on Manitou Avenue dedicated to New Orleans-style beignets: hot, fried-to-order, and served with dipping sauces including a house caramel. The outdoor seating area faces the main strip. Rated 4.9 on TripAdvisor and 4.6 on Restaurant Guru with 650-plus reviews — legitimately the most-loved food stop in Manitou.

An intentionally off-grid cafe on Manitou Avenue run by the Twelve Tribes community, open 24 hours six days a week. The specialty is Brazilian yerba mate drinks in dozens of preparations, alongside fresh-baked bread, sandwiches, and salads made from scratch. The interior design is hand-built and eccentric — not designed to look quirky but genuinely the result of communal craft.

A Manitou Springs Mexican restaurant famous for 14 straight years winning Best Margarita in Colorado Springs. The Baja-style menu runs smothered burritos, enchiladas, and fajitas alongside the cocktail program. Free in-house chips and salsa are better than the standard.

A New York-style pizza counter on Ruxton Avenue, next to the Manitou Incline basecamp, open since 2005. Large thin-crust slices, garlic knots, and a pepperoni roster that earns its 4.7-star Restaurant Guru rating from 3,000-plus reviews. The Hellfire pizza (very spicy) is the house personality dish.

A mid-block wine bar on Manitou Avenue in a character-building with multicolored umbrellas hanging from the ceiling. The menu runs small plates and flatbreads designed for sharing alongside the wine list. Cauliflower wings, pretzels, and beef tips cover the savory range; the wine list is better curated than the setting suggests.

A four-course fondue experience on Manitou Avenue: cheese course, salad, a raclette tabletop grill entree, and chocolate dessert fondue. Intimate dining room, attentive service, and a structure designed to stretch a meal into an evening. Rated 4.3 on TripAdvisor with 628 Yelp reviews. The correct special-occasion option in Manitou.

The most famous difficult day hike in Colorado: 2,768 railroad ties climbing 2,000 vertical feet in under a mile, with grades reaching 68%. The Incline follows the abandoned bed of a 1907 funicular railway that served a water pipe up the mountain. The descent is prohibited on the steps — all hikers must use Barr Trail for the return.

The lower section of the Barr Trail — the route to the Pikes Peak summit — from the Manitou Springs trailhead to Barr Camp at 10,200 feet, about 6.5 miles one-way. This is how the Incline descends and how serious hikers approach Pikes Peak. The trail passes through montane and subalpine zones with consistent Pikes Peak views above treeline.

A 4.3-mile moderate loop inside Garden of the Gods threading through the main sandstone formations, past the Siamese Twins window, and across the ridgeline above the central garden. Rated 4.7 stars on AllTrails from 5,456 reviews — the park's best sustained loop for visitors who want more than a walk on the paved path.

A 3.3-mile moderate loop in a city-owned open space park on the western edge of Colorado Springs, adjacent to Manitou Springs. The trail circles a quarry pond, passes through canyon terrain cut into the red Fountain Formation sandstone, and delivers Front Range views. Rated 4.8 stars on AllTrails from 2,900-plus reviews.

The 1.1-mile paved loop through the heart of Garden of the Gods, passing directly beneath the Balanced Rock and along the base of the main sandstone formations. The right choice for visitors with limited mobility, families with strollers, or anyone who wants the full-scale rock experience without a sustained hike.

A 2.9-mile out-and-back trail starting in Manitou Springs and climbing Red Mountain for views over the town, the valley, and Pikes Peak to the west. Moderately strenuous with consistent but manageable elevation gain. A good choice for a morning hike when the Incline reservation system is full.

A 3.6-mile loop trail circling the full perimeter of Garden of the Gods, rated 4.7 stars on AllTrails from 3,832 reviews. The outer loop sees fewer visitors than the inner paved path while covering more varied terrain — some scrambling sections, ridgeline views, and the less-visited north formations.

An eight-building complex on Manitou Avenue housing 400-plus coin-operated machines, some dating to the early 20th century — working Mutoscopes, penny pinball, mechanical horse-racing, skeeball, and modern arcade games. Operated continuously for over 90 years. The oldest machines are genuinely functional antiques, not museum pieces.

The free interpretive center on the north edge of Garden of the Gods, with 30 exhibits covering the geology, ecology, and human history of the park. The building's west-facing window walls frame the sandstone formations at scale — useful context before walking among the rocks.

A working railway experience since 1891, departing Manitou Springs for the 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak in 1 hour 10 minutes. The train is the family-appropriate way to reach the summit without hiking. The new summit visitor center, rebuilt in 2021, has food service and restrooms at altitude.

A limestone cavern system in Williams Canyon north of Manitou Springs, with guided cave tours through fossil-rich rooms and a variety of above-ground adventure activities — Via Ferrata, zip line, and cliff-edge shooting gallery. The cave has been a commercial tour attraction since the 1880s; the geology is genuinely interesting.

A Colorado Springs institution since 1969, performing Victorian-style melodrama and vaudeville acts in an 1880s chateau on Ruxton Avenue. The format is participatory — the audience boos the villain, cheers the hero, and throws popcorn at appropriate moments. Dinner is included. It is what it is, and regulars love it for exactly that reason.

A community arts center in a 1914 schoolhouse on Manitou Avenue with working artist studios, rotating exhibition galleries, a cafe, and regular events including classes, live music, and open-studio nights. The building is the informal creative hub of Manitou Springs, mixing professional artists with working studios open to visitors.

A 1,341-acre city park just north of Manitou Springs featuring 300-foot vertical sandstone formations — crimson, white, and buff — that rise from the valley floor with Pikes Peak as backdrop. Free public park, open year-round, maintained by Colorado Springs but functionally the front yard of Manitou. The rock formations are more dramatic up close, from within the park, than from the highway.

Eight naturally carbonated springs distributed across the town, fed by rain that percolates through Pikes Peak granite and emerges mineral-rich and fizzy along the Fountain Creek drainage. Each spring has a different mineral composition and flavor. The self-guided spring walk along Manitou Avenue and Ruxton Avenue is free.

The highest cog railway in North America, climbing from Manitou Springs at 6,000 feet to Pikes Peak's 14,115-foot summit since 1891. The 3.5-hour round trip covers dramatic altitude change through alpine tundra to the summit visitor center. The view from the top on a clear day extends to the Kansas prairie.

An 1895 nine-architecture-style chateau built by a French Catholic priest on a hillside above Manitou Avenue, now run by the Manitou Springs Historical Society. The 40 furnished Victorian rooms and seven architectural styles in a single building make it an architectural curiosity with no parallel in Colorado.

A preserved and reconstructed Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwelling complex relocated from the Mesa Verde region to a dramatic canyon just west of Manitou Springs. The structures were disassembled and rebuilt here in 1907; the site has been continuously developed as an interpretive museum. The canyon setting and the close-access to the dwellings are the point.

The original 1859 Colorado Territory capital along West Colorado Avenue in adjacent Colorado Springs, now a walkable commercial district of Victorian storefronts housing independent galleries, boutiques, and restaurants. The 25-plus art galleries make this the largest concentration of gallery space in the Pikes Peak region.

A limestone cavern system discovered in the 1870s and developed as a tour attraction, set in Williams Canyon just north of Manitou Springs. Standard cave tours run year-round through fossil-rich chambers. Above ground, a Via Ferrata route, zip lines, and a cliff-top shooting gallery extend the visit for families.