Genoa: The Tower That Claims Six States

Genoa was established in nineteen oh three as a stop on the Rock Island Railroad across the Lincoln County plains. It might have stayed utterly anonymous except for C. W.

Gregory, who built a gas station and cafe along the highway in nineteen twenty-six and then kept building upward: a sixty-five-foot tower on a site confirmed in nineteen thirty-four to be the highest point between New York and Denver. Gregory claimed that from the top of his World's Wonder View Tower, a visitor could see six states: Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, New Mexico, and South Dakota. The six-state claim drew road-trippers who stopped for decades to climb the stairs and squint at the horizon.

The tower eventually closed and sat abandoned for years. It has since been partially restored, its hand-lettered signs still promising the impossible view that made Genoa briefly the most talked-about dot on the Colorado plains.