World's Wonder Tower Museum (2007)

When I first visited the Tower Museum, I found a veritable Wild West wonder cabinet in a labyrinthine interior. The museum's long-time owner/proprietor/raconteur and gagster Jerry Chubbuck graciously invited me to photograph whatever drew my attention among the tableaux in the numerous nooks and crannies. These photographs, made in 2007 and on subsequent visits, represent a small sample of the many wonders to be found there. The Wonder View Tower is currently closed due to the death of Mr. Chubbuck (in 2013, and the site's contents auctioned off), though there are hopes in the local community that the museum will reopen in some form or another. -from a booklet containing a brief history of the place: "The World's Wonder View Tower was a tourist trap and roadside attraction located [just next to the highway, now Interstate 70] in Genoa, Colorado. The tower was built in the mid-1920s by C.W. Gregory (known as Colorado's P.T. Barnum) and his partner Myrtle Le Bow. The promoters boasted that it is possible to see six states (Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Mexico, and South Dakota) from the top of the tower. "The tower is 65 feet tall. The site it was built on was confirmed in 1934 to be the highest point between New York and Denver. The tower is also a museum and vintage shop containing curiosities and novelty items such as a two-headed calf, an eight-legged pig, and more than 50,000 types of glass bottles. ... [and] also contains historic American West artifacts and weapons, Native American arrowheads and other artifacts, and fossils."