Overview

Located within Estes Park, visitors to the Baldpate Inn’s Key Museum find a collection of more than 20,000 keys on display. Guests and visitors have contributed to the collection since WW I. Those coming to Rocky Mountain National Park find a stop here to be an interesting highlight of the trip.

Location/Directions

To reach the Baldpate Inn Key Museum, you simply drive south on Highway 7 from Estes Park. It’s located opposite Lily Lake. You’ll see signs for the Inn. The address is 4900 State Highway 7, Estes Park, Colorado, and the telephone number is 970-586-6151 or toll free 866-577-5397.

Hours/Seasons

The Key Museum is open from the end of May to the middle of October. Hours are from 7 am to 11 pm.

Cost

To visit the Key Museum is free and open to the public.

More Info

Ethel and Gordon Mace came to Estes Park on a honeymoon, loved the area and decided to stay. They built the Baldpate Inn in 1917, naming it after a hotel in the novel, The Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers.

In the novel, guests were given their own keys to the hotel and thus could return to visit when the hotel was closed in the winter. The Mace family carried on this tradition until metal costs skyrocketed during WW I. Disappointed guests began their own tradition by coming year after year and bringing their own keys or ones they found.

The amount of keys grew until there are more than 20,000 keys in this unique collection. Because guests and visitors began competing to see who could bring the most exotic or unusual key, antique keys of every kind can be found here, including keys from Westminster Abby, Frankenstein’s castle, Mozart’s wine cellar and the Pentagon.