Baldpate Inn, Estes Park Key Museum

Baldpate Inn was built in 1917 by Ethel and Gordon Mace. Located within Estes Park, visitors to the Baldpate Inn can enjoy everything from hiking and fishing adventures to beautiful vistas and wildlife viewing in the neighboring Rocky Mountain National Park. The Inn is also home to the largest key collection in the world. The Baldpate Inn's Key Museum is located on site and lures many interested folk to check it out.

On Gordon and Ethel Mace's honeymoon to Estes Park, they decided they loved the area too much to leave. They built a small cabin for themselves and a few extra cabins for visitors to the area. These vacation cabins became so popular that they had to plan a larger facility. It opened in 1917 and at the time was one of the few inns to offer hot water, indoor plumbing, and electricity. It is believed that the inn's original owners are responsible for haunting the inn today. You may be lucky enough to see one of their apparitions in the Key Room or wandering the hotel's hallways.

The Inn was named after a novel by Earl Derr Biggers called Seven Keys to Baldpate, in which visitors were given their own keys and came to the hotel in the winter when the facility was closed. The Mace family decided to follow the plot and handed out individual keys for each guest to keep. WWI raised the cost of metal and keys were no longer given to guests. Disappointed guests then started their own tradition by returning year after year with their old keys or keys they had found. The collection began and today the Key Room houses over 20,000 of the most exotic and ancient keys in the world.

Located on the 9,000 foot Twin Sisters Mountain, the Inn is a fantastic getaway for those who love the great outdoors. It's twelve rooms and four cabins are open to guests from Memorial Day through mid October. Many of the rooms offer beautiful views. There is also a cozy library where guests can spend hours chatting and warming up near a fire.

For details, visit the Baldpate Inn website.