Skyline Drive

Skyline Drive is a short but spectacular 3-mile paved road perched on a narrow sandstone hogback ridge above Cañon City, with sheer drop-offs on both sides and sweeping views of the Arkansas River valley and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It's one of the most dramatic ridge drives in Colorado and requires no hiking or special vehicle — just a willingness to drive along a ledge barely wider than your car.

Built by convict labor from the Fremont County Correctional Facility between 1905 and 1909, the road is one-way and features three "tunnels" — really carved notches through the ridge — and a series of pull-offs where you can step out and look straight down both sides of the ridge to the valley 800 feet below.

The views of the Royal Gorge bridge and the surrounding canyon country are exceptional, and the geological formation itself — a vertical hogback of Dakota sandstone tilted 90 degrees from its original horizontal position — is a vivid illustration of the tectonic forces that built Colorado.