Photo: Courtesy Manitou Avenue, Downtown Manitou Springs
Emma Crawford Coffin Races and Festival
- When
- Sat, Oct 24 · daytime
- Where
- Manitou Avenue, Downtown Manitou Springs, Manitou Springs
- Price
- Free
Teams build coffins on wheels, dress as the late Emma Crawford and her pallbearers, and race them up Manitou Avenue, and that is exactly as strange and as beloved as it sounds. The race is rooted in a real local legend about Crawford's casket washing down Red Mountain in the 1920s, and the town has leaned all the way into it for 32 years.
A hearse-and-costume parade runs alongside the races, and the whole downtown turns into a Halloween-weekend street party. It is a 70-mile drive south from Denver and a genuine Worth-the-Trip outing.
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