Man Spends 52 Years Building 160-Foot Rock Castle in Colorado Forest—Now He’s 79 Years Old

Left: (Jacob Boomsma/Shutterstock); Right: This image has been color corrected (Hustvedt/CC BY-SA 3.0); Inset: Courtesy of Bishop Castle

They wanted a castle. So Jim Bishop was going to build them a castle.

It was 1969 when the ornamental ironworker in his late 20s set out building a stone cottage near Pueblo, Colorado, with the help of his father, intending to make a home out of a shack. But what began as a construction project turned into a beacon for freedom some 50 years in the making. Bishop Castle would be born from it.