Mulberry and Aspen sts., downtown Fruita, Colorado, www.miketheheadlesschicken.org

In 1945, Fruita’s Lloyd Olsen chopped a rooster’s head off, but left his brain stem hanging on by a thread. Strangely enough, his behavior didn’t change all that much. It follows that “The Headless Wonder Chicken” toured the country for 18 months, with Olsen feeding it grain and water with an eyedropper. Mike lived the life of a rock star and was even appraised to be worth $10,000, before dying the death of a rock star, choking in the middle of the night. In 2000, sculptor Lyle Nichols paid testament to Mike’s fortitude with a 300-pound semi-abstract sculpture. Fruita also plays host to a festival every May that invites visitors to “party their heads off” and “Run like a Headless Chicken” in a 5K.

Colorado 165, west of Beulah, Colorado, 719/485-3040, www.bishopcastle.org 

One of Colorado’s most preeminent—and quirkiest—roadside attractions, Bishop Castle is still a work-in-progress. Jim Bishop started his big, strange castle in 1959 and now dubs it “the largest one-man construction project in the world.” No kidding. A colossal castle made from rocks collected out of the surrounding forest, the castle has a 160-foot tower and is watched over by a steel dragon with a flamethrower in its throat. Next Bishop wants to surround the 2.5-acre property with a two-story rock wall with an internal walkway, a project that dwarfs the castle in scope. Considering the unfinished state of the castle’s interior, and the somewhat scary climb to the top of the towers (great views, but wobbly platforms, wide-open windows, and gusting winds), it might be a long time before the wall is finished. Another hurdle: There is nary a rock left in site from the tippy-top. But Bishop’s persistence has surprised just about every castle visitor to date, so don’t count him out.

Colorado Blvd. and Miner St., Idaho Springs, Colorado

Dedicated to all men and women who served the United States in uniform, this statue is not of an actual man or woman who served the United States in uniform, but in fact a fictional man who served in a fictional uniform in the funny pages, Steve Canyon. Written and illustrated by Milton Caniff from 1947 to 1988, Steve Canyon was memorialized by Idaho Springs in the form of a limestone likeness statue commissioned by the local chamber of commerce in 1950 to drum up publicity for the mountain-gateway town.

26 miles south of Hartsel via Colorado 9, www.guffeycolorado.com

The extra mileage off the beaten path is a small price to pay to check out Guffey (pop. 30) for an hour or two. Bill Soux, the proprietor of the Guffey Garage, Last Chance Antiques, and several rental cabins in town, is also a mad artist. His masterpieces: the exterior of the Guffey Garage (which looks like a cross between a Wild West barroom, Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, and a psychedelic vision) and across the street the ominous “Prison Wagon,” a mannequin jailbird in a cell atop a wagon pulled by the skeletal remains of two horses and driven by a human skeleton. Soux’s cabins are also funky and historic, and cheap ($35 to $55 for two) and his imagination runs wild, in all sorts of directions. He is the proud owner of Guffey’s mayor, a black cat named Monster who is the latest in a long line of pets to pull the strings in town, and the mastermind behind the annual Fourth of July Chicken Fly, where kids with plungers goad chickens from a mailbox and see how far they fly before touching down. The record is 60 feet.

Genoa, Colorado, ourjourney.info/MyJourneyDestinations/WonderTower.asp, 719/763-2309

In its heyday, the Wonder View Tower was really something.

Built at the highest spot between New York City and the Rockies—nearly 400 feet higher then Denver at 5,671 feet above sea level—the 80-foot-tall tower, from the top of which the proprietors claim you can see six states (Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico), was once the anchor of a popular lodging/eatery/dancehall/saloon. Burgers were a dime, and a gallon of wine was a quarter. A stage fronted several dining rooms, where booths were sunk into the funky rock walls, many hand-painted with various symbols. “Eat, drink, gas, and pop at the tower” was the slogan back in the day.

Today, it’s still something, but we’re not quite sure what. Every last room in the place is cluttered with antiques. The paint is peeling. The stairs and ladders up to the tower are shabby. But the view, and a wisp of the roadside mystique, is still intact. As much as things change, some things remain the same.

I don’t know if you can really see six states, bit there are three two-headed calves in one of the rooms on the main floor.

Beech and Main streets, Lamar, Colorado

One of a dozen such monuments—and the only one in Colorado—this oddly maternal chunk of granite-heavy aggregate naturally honors the mothers who crossed the country on the Santa Fe Trail with their broods in covered wagons. These statues, erected in the 1920s by the Daughters of the American Revolution, have rifles and babies in their right and left hands, respectively. I salute the statue not because of the rifle, nor the baby, nor the rare baby-rifle combination, but instead because this monument to travelers traversing the plains should be celebrated by all road-trippers, whether they’re mothers or not.

At the Colorado Convention Center, 14th and California sts., Denver, Colorado

Peering into the Colorado Convention Center, the Lawrence Argent sculpture “I see what you mean” is a 40-foot-tall blue bear that instantly became the Mile High City’s most lovable piece of public art when it was installed in 2005. Argent, a working artist and art professor at the University of Denver, is the mastermind behind a number of other eye-grabbing works of public art in metro Denver, including “Ghost Trolley” at Colfax Ave. and Elmira St. in Aurora and “Virere,” the 20-foot aluminum blades of grass at Broadway and Yale Ave. in Englewood. And if you really can’t get enough of the big blue bear, Argent commissioned two miniature scale models to sell as souvenirs, available at the convention center and the gift shop at the Denver Art Museum.

Around Fiddler’s Green Cir., Greenwood Village, Colorado, 303/806-0444, www.moaonline.org

Part of the south suburban Museum of Outdoor Art’s collection, a ring of captivating Alice bronzes by Harry Marinsky dot the sidewalks surrounding the outdoor music venue known as Coors Amphitheatre. Beyond Alice, there is the White Rabbit, the Mad Tea Party, the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar smoking his hookah on a mushroom, and a ferocious Queen of Hearts. For Alice fans, it’s worth the wander in the ‘burbs.

U.S. 285 and Turkey Creek Rd., near Morrison, Colorado (about 20 miles southwest of Denver), 303/697-6829, www.tinytownrailroad.com

There was never a King Kong in the Old West movie, but if there ever is, Tiny Town would make a solid location. The owner of a moving company, George Turner built a 1/6 scale model of a Western town for his daughter in 1915 and opened it to the public in 1920. Ravaged by the elements, Tiny Town was on the verge of becoming Tiny Ghetto in the 1980s and a local group formed to fix it up (including the miniature railroad), maintain it, and build more tiny structures, including several storefront-lined city blocks, a Dr. Seuss-style house, and a 1/6-scale Coney Island, a tribute to the real thing in Bailey .

On the Arkansas River Levee, Pueblo, Colorado

The levee holding back the Arkansas River for over three miles as it passes through Pueblo is a concrete canvas for what the Guinness folks have certified as the world’s longest painting. What began as oddball paintings by the anonymous and nocturnal Tee Hee Artists in the late 1970s soon became legitimized by a community-approved organization that upped the artistic ante. Since then, scores of local artists have slowly covered two miles (and counting) of continuous levee with vibrant artwork depicting everything from pro-recycling logos to Aztec history to Elvis Presley.