Bishop’s Castle
“Oh well you don’t have the right to call this a castle.”
“Oh I don’t?”
“No, you’re not of royal blood. You cant call this a castle.”
“I’ll call it any fucking thing I wanna call it!”
Jim Bishop, Castle Builder, will call his life’s work any “fucking” thing he wants to call it. After all, he has been single handedly building the entire structure since 1969. His latest project, the moat and draw bridge, sit just feet from Highway 165 in the San Isabel National Forest of Colorado.
Incomplete balconies, bridges, and towers lay in every corner of the structure. The twists and turns throughout make you wonder whether or not there is a plan or blue print for the monolith. If so, Jim Bishop surely stores it in the nightmares of building safety inspectors and those who are afraid of heights.
The spiral staircase that twists 160 feet into the air inside the main tower shakes and bends with every step. The huge, open windows following up the walls of the tower do not make you feel any more secure.
“If I wasn’t against using cuss words, I definitely would be right now,” announces the girl several flights up in the tower.
“Hell, I say go for it,” replies the man squeezing down the stairs past her.
The girl also tells us that her Father is down on the third story of the castle, and refuses to climb any higher. She is the brave one.
Traversing every balcony, climbing every staircase, and standing on top of all four towers definitely feels like an accomplishment, especially with each one feeling shakier and less stable than the last.
So why does this place exist? Why has Jim Bishop been building it for the last 43 years? The man has a lot to say. He twists any topic into his anger towards the government, the elite, the New World Order, the Illuminati, etc. 
From a youtube clip about Jim and his castle:
“What do we do in the morning? We shit, shower, shave, shine, and shampoo, then they got us dumbed down in the evening and we take out our aggressions on… the Fs. We feed, fight, fuss,… fornicate, and FOOTBALL!. None of them football players ever built a real castle, have they!?
He tells us that one of the main reasons he keeps working out here is to stay away from Pueblo, Colorado as much as possible, where his home is, but I think he just likes talking to everyone who comes to see Bishop’s Castle.
-Ben
