Colorado on Screen: A Movie Location Day Trip from Denver
By Gil Tabor, November 7, 2026
Real Colorado places from The Shining, Mork & Mindy, Dumb and Dumber, Sleeper and Die Hard 2, in one day from Denver, with what you can visit.
1. The plan
Hollywood has spent fifty years using Colorado as a stand-in for somewhere else, which is the most Colorado thing that has ever happened to it. This is one long day: an hour of Denver, then west past a house from the future, up to Boulder for an alien sitcom, and up to Estes Park for the hotel that gave Stephen King a nightmare. Two of the stops are private homes, so you look from the sidewalk or the highway and keep moving. A car makes the day; the Denver hour works on foot.
2. Denver Union Station
Start with coffee in the Great Hall, which has played itself in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995) and Silver City (2004). It is the only stop on this list with a train schedule and good pastry, and the only one where you will not be asked to leave the porch.
3. Civic Center Park and the Brown Palace
Walk to Civic Center Park, which shows up in In the Line of Fire (1993) and Silver City, then over to the Brown Palace at 321 17th St, where Robert Redford and Jane Fonda shot scenes for Our Souls at Night (2017). The lobby is open, the atrium is the point, and nobody minds if you just look up for a while.
4. Colfax and the Bluebird
Drive east on Colfax, the street that opens Vanishing Point (1971) and turns up in Every Which Way but Loose (1978), which is to say Clint Eastwood and an orangutan were on Colfax before you were. The Bluebird Theater at 3317 E Colfax Ave is in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead. If you stay in town tonight instead, see a show there.
5. Optional: the Die Hard 2 control tower
Old Stapleton airport played Washington Dulles in Die Hard 2 (1990). Its control tower is now FlyteCo Tower in Central Park, with games, a brewpub and tours of the tower. It is east of downtown and the rest of this day is west, so do it on a Denver day, or first thing if you are an early riser and a John McClane completist.
6. The Sleeper house, from I-70
Head west on I-70 and look up on Genesee Mountain for the white flying saucer of a house that Charles Deaton built in 1963 and Woody Allen put in Sleeper (1973). It is a private home, people live there, and it is not open. You see it from the highway, which is how it was designed to be seen anyway. Do not go up the hill.
7. Red Rocks
Detour south to Red Rocks, where U2 filmed Under a Blood Red Sky on June 5, 1983, in a rainstorm that should have canceled it. The park and amphitheatre are free to walk when there is no show, roughly 8 AM to 4 PM in the cold months, and the stage is where Bono waved the white flag. Stand in the rows and do the math on how wet everyone was.
8. Boulder: the Mork & Mindy house and the deli
The house at 1619 Pine St was the outside of Mindy's place on Mork & Mindy from 1978 to 1982; the inside was a sound stage in Hollywood. It is a private home, so stay on the sidewalk and keep it to one photo. Fans gathered there after Robin Williams died in 2014. Somebody still lives there, so be quick about it. Then walk to 1117 Pearl St, which played the New York Deli on the show. The real deli closed in 1999. Get lunch somewhere on the mall.
9. Estes Park: the Stanley Hotel
End at 333 Wonderview Ave. Stephen King and his wife spent one night here in 1974, late in the season with the hotel nearly empty, in room 217, and he left with The Shining. Kubrick's film was not shot here, a point the hotel's own tour makes for you. The 1997 TV version was, and the Stanley also played the Hotel Danbury in Dumb and Dumber (1994). The hedge maze out front went in in 2015 as a tribute to the movie that never filmed there. The Shining Tour runs about an hour, $35 when we checked, ages 8 and up, small groups, so reserve ahead. Stay for the ghost tour after dark if you have the nerve and a ride home.
10. If you have a second day: True Grit and Butch Cassidy
Five-plus hours southwest, Ridgway dressed up as 1880s Fort Smith for True Grit (1969), and the courtroom scenes were shot in the real Ouray County Courthouse a few miles south, still a working courthouse. The town runs a free self-guided tour, and the True Grit Cafe on North Lena Street keeps the painted sign from the film; call ahead in winter. Farther on, the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad is the train Butch and Sundance robbed in 1969. The Stub sent a reporter on that train in 2008. He came back with a sunburn and a better story than the paper deserved. (Gil)
Quick answers
- Was The Shining filmed at the Stanley Hotel?
- Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film was not. Stephen King's stay in 1974 inspired the novel, and the 1997 TV miniseries was filmed at the hotel.
- Can you visit the Mork & Mindy house in Boulder?
- Only from the sidewalk. The house at 1619 Pine St is a private home; take a photo and move on.
- Can you visit the Sleeper house in Golden?
- No. The Sculptured House on Genesee Mountain is a private home. You can see it from I-70 west of Denver.
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