Bishop Castle: the Colorado Landmark Built by One Man

Bishop Castle is a strange stone building in Colorado. The official website describes it like this: “a monumental statue in stone and iron that cries loud testament to the beauty and glory of not only Having a Dream, but Sticking with your Dream no matter what, and most importantly, that if you do believe in yourself and strive to maintain that belief, anything can happen!” The castle has been built over 60 years by one man, Jim Bishop.

It has three full storeys of interior rooms complete with a Grand Ballroom, soaring towers and bridges with vistas of a hundred miles. The castle is always open and admission is free — they just ask that visitors respect the castle, and keep in mind that it is an active construction site.

There’s also a gift shop called Castle Keepsakes, which is a main source of funding for the continued construction of the Castle. It offers a range of gifts and collectors’ items, from typical merchandise like t-shirts, mugs and keyrings to Renaissance and fantasy weaponry, costuming, dragons, original ornamental ironwork by Jim Bishop himself.

They also offer year-round wedding ceremonies, which make for a one-of-a-kind experience for you and your guests in a beautiful woodland castle setting. They state that as much as they dislike rules, they only ask that you don’t bring alcohol, you can’t close off the castle to the public at any time during the ceremony, you reserve your date just 2 weeks in advance, and there is no set charge but they ask for a suggested donation of $500.

School groups are also welcome to visit, and Mr Bishop may be available for an inspirational talk to the class about the value of having a dream in this day and age and seeing it through. Again, there is no charge for school visits—they just ask for an optional donation.

So let’s have a look at the history of this strange place.

Young Jim Bishop was always powerfully drawn to the mountains. So in 1959, at 15 years old, he found a two-and-a-half-acre piece of land for sale, enclosed on three sides by the San Isabel National Forest in southern Colorado, and convinced his parents to buy it for him using his own savings he’d made by mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, and working with his father, Willard, in the family’s ornamental iron works. So his parents Willard and Polly signed for the land deal, as Jim wasn’t old enough to do it himself. That same year, Jim had dropped out of high school following an argument with his English teacher, who had yelled at him, “You’ll never amount to anything, Jim Bishop!”

Jim and his dad spent the next ten years camping on the land and laying the groundwork for a family cabin on the site. Jim soon discovered his enjoyment in swinging an axe and wielding a shovel or pick, building a clearing with a driveway, which now serves as the courtyard between the family cabin and the castle itself. In 1967, Jim married his wife Phoebe, and in 1969, at 25 years old, Jim decided it was time to start building a cabin in the mountains. With rocks being plentiful, everywhere, and free, he chose to start building a one-room stone cottage.

Building was a long process. In this rocky mountainous area of Colorado, 9,000 feet above sea level, the summers were short, with snow not melting until the middle of May, sometimes June. So alongside working in the ornamental iron shop to support his family, building took a long time. Jim began building his cabin, and after some time, he and he dad started alternating two-week stints: one working at the shop to run the business and the other up the mountain working on the cabin. But they continued to build, and the walls steadily rose.

Throughout the summer, friends, local ranchers, and even some family members commented that it looked like they were building a castle. Jim heard these remarks so often that by late spring 1972, his imagination was ignited, and he began telling friends and family that he was, in fact, going to build a castle. When his dad Willard first heard this, he stated that castles were usually quite large and that he wanted no part in such an endeavour. But Jim persisted, and the construction that began as a one-room stone cottage with an Eiffel Tower-shaped fireplace evolved into what is now known as the Bishop Castle, possibly the largest one-man project in the country.

As the castle grew, so did the fame of the builder himself. More and more people began visiting, and Jim was frequently asked if he needed help building his castle. For the first eight years, his response was always, “Sure!” Yet, in all those years, not a single person ever followed through on their promise to help. So the concept of the castle being a one-man project emerged in the midst of construction; it was not an original intention or a childhood dream, as many might assume.

During the castle’s construction, Jim also found joy in building his physique. He set up an old army wall tent in the clearing, where he would work out with weights for a couple of hours each evening after a day of building with stone and mortar. This gave him a new outlook on life, seeing the balance in everything he did, and through this approach, Jim began to fully visualise his next steps in construction and how everything would fit together on a grand scale. There were no plans, blueprints, or drawings. He marvelled at how certain features naturally aligned or fell into place, and thought it could be an act of God.

To fully realise the extent of his vision, Jim utilised every resource available to him. He undertook every task necessary – hauling rock from state highway ditches, felling timber and milling it into lumber, and building scaffolding as he progressed. He manually dug holes up to 12 feet deep for the foundations, mixed all his own mortar, and carried it, often uphill, to his work site. He also devised and assembled complex systems of pulleys to hoist items such as tree trunks for floor supports.

As the castle expanded over the years, it gained increasing attention, drawing more visitors. Friends suggested that Jim should capitalise on the growing attraction, but Jim had a different perspective. He remembered his own childhood frustrations of being unable to afford visits to the zoo or the ballpark due to high admission costs for a working-class family. Since the initial inspiration for the castle came from people visiting the property, Jim decided to welcome visitors for free. He placed a donation box on the property, allowing people to contribute whatever amount they felt comfortable with.

This honour system became the main way of financing the project, reinforcing Jim’s belief that the castle was a symbol of American freedom. Although this approach sometimes led to frustrations, particularly when he wanted to construct larger features like an elevator but lacked the funds, Jim remained committed to his vision. He felt so strongly about maintaining the integrity of his dream that he legally documented that Bishop Castle would always remain free to the public.

After 8 years of diligent paperwork, completed without a lawyer’s assistance, Jim’s wife Phoebe achieved what many had deemed impossible: she successfully obtained a non-profit charter from the IRS, which formalised the castle’s ability to set up and maintain a donation box on the premises, which became a key funding source for its construction. Additionally, Phoebe established the castle’s gift shop in a one-room log cabin, built by the family across the courtyard from the castle, and she managed it for 13 years. The combined proceeds from the gift shop and the donation box were crucial for purchasing materials for ongoing construction. Although the management of the gift shop has changed hands twice since Phoebe stepped down, both the shop and the donation box remain the primary financial sources for the Bishop Castle’s construction.

The charity established by the family aims to assist local families with medical expenses for young children not covered by insurance. Despite the IRS informing the Bishops that they were not obligated to make any donations through the charity until the castle’s completion, they have operated the Charity for Newborn Heart Surgery in such a way that it has made numerous contributions over the years. They take pride in possibly being the only charitable foundation in the United States created and sustained by working-class individuals.

In 1994, Jim reached a point with one of the castle’s towers where he felt it was sufficiently high, but this satisfaction was short-lived and he wanted to make it even taller. In 1995, he constructed and installed a thirty-foot-tall steel steeple, elevating the total height to approximately 160 feet, similar to a 16-storey building. To this day, Jim is content with the overall height of his castle, but he has recently toyed with the idea of extending one of the corner outer wall towers to 250 feet, in response to a local zoning official who told him he couldn’t build over 25 feet—so he simply added a zero.

Unfortunately, in 2018, a fire destroyed the castle’s gift shop, which was its main source of income for a long time. However, the castle itself was unharmed by the flames, and the Bishops weren’t about to let this stop them. Daniel, Jim and Phoebe’s son, said with a shrug, “It could’ve been electrical, it could’ve been somebody camping out on the porch or started a campfire that got out of control, we don’t know. It’s really not all that important.”

The family started crowdfunding money to rebuild, supplementing whatever they could collect from the donation bins placed all around the castle. Volunteers also came to help clear the wreckage, and Jim isn’t stopping his hard work any time soon. Daniel said, "I don’t plan on working on anything until he’s gone, because he wants it to be a one man project as long as he’s alive.”

A few months before the fire, Jim was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but still kept working as much as he could up at the castle, while trying to care for Phoebe, who suffered various ailments and medical problems. Sadly, Phoebe died later in 2018 from cancer. Jim told The Denver Post, "I felt like dying then, but God had more plans for me." He himself overcame Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare form of skin cancer. Nowadays, he has Parkinson's and bipolar disorder to contend with, and is said to spend more time dozing by the fire and taking medicine.

He still has dreams for the castle though, and says the project is nowhere near finished. He says he wants to build a moat and drawbridge, a roller coaster attached to the outside, and a balcony "big enough to hold an orchestra." Jim told the Los Angeles Times, "When I don't wake up one morning, then it will be done. And I don't need no help from nobody!"

Jim once said the castle was never for him or for his family—it’s for everyone else. He said, “Them walls, them buttresses, arches, towers. If there wasn’t somebody to climb on them, be inspired by them, get married up there, and use them, and have fun screamin’, hollerin’ and climbin’, there’d be no point in doing it.”

Today, visitors to Bishop Castle are greeted by an impressively monumental structure of stone and iron, exemplifying the belief that with self-confidence and perseverance, anything is possible. What began in 1969 as a simple rock cottage now stands today as a monument to preserving one man’s mission, and the Bishops’ dream still lives on. Who knows where it’ll go from here, and if it’ll continue to be built on in Jim’s legacy.