America's longest-running Forbes Five-Star resort — the 1918 pink-stucco Spencer Penrose-built grand hotel at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain, 771 rooms across 5,000 acres, three championship courses.
"The Broadmoor has held the Forbes Five-Star designation longer than any resort in North America — 64 consecutive years and counting. There is no other Rocky Mountain hotel that still operates at that standard."
The Broadmoor opened on 29 June 1918, the personal project of Spencer Penrose — a Philadelphia-born mining magnate who had made his fortune at Cripple Creek and Bingham Canyon and decided to build the most ambitious American resort west of the Mississippi at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain. The architect was Frederick J. Sterner of New York; the principal designer was the Italian Warren & Wetmore firm whose other work included Grand Central Terminal. Penrose financed the construction at a cost equivalent to roughly $750 million in today's currency, and the property opened with the first championship golf course west of the Mississippi (designed by Donald Ross), the resort's own private lake, a 100-mile bridle-path system, and the only North American resort with its own working zoo.
Today's property has grown from Penrose's original 350-room single building into a 771-room campus across 5,000 acres. The Main Building still anchors the property — three storeys of pink stucco around the original Italian-Renaissance courtyard, with the historic suites on the upper floors looking out over the lake to Cheyenne Mountain. The Broadmoor West and South wings were added in the 1960s and 1990s; the Cottages run along the lake edge for the multi-bedroom family booking; the Estate House (a separate ten-bedroom mansion) handles the corporate-retreat and family-reunion booking at the very top of the price range. The Broadmoor's three Wilderness Experiences — the Ranch at Emerald Valley, Cloud Camp at the top of Cheyenne Mountain, and the Fly Fishing Camp on the South Platte River — are owned and operated by the resort and are reachable only as Broadmoor guests.
Three championship courses sit on the resort property: the East Course (Donald Ross 1918, redesigned by Robert Trent Jones Sr. 1954, host of the 1959 US Open Championship and the 2018 US Senior Open), the West Course (Robert Trent Jones Sr. 1965), and the Mountain Course (Jack Nicklaus 1976). The Spa at the Broadmoor is a 43,000-square-foot Forbes Five-Star facility — the only Five-Star spa in Colorado and one of the seventeen Forbes Five-Star spas in North America. Eighteen on-site dining options run from the Penrose Room (the only Forbes Five-Star restaurant in Colorado, French-American tasting menu) through Restaurant 1858 (steakhouse), Ristorante del Lago (Italian), Summit (the Adam Tihany-designed contemporary American), to the Ladies of Honor (the new tea room), the Tavern (the historic bar where the Penrose era is most visible), and the Golden Bee (the Victorian English pub flown over from London in 1961).
The Broadmoor has held the Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rating for sixty-four consecutive years — the longest continuous Forbes Five-Star run of any resort in North America, a distinction the property has never had a year off from since the rating system's inception in 1958. The AAA Five-Diamond run is similarly unbroken. The combined effect is a resort that has — uniquely in the Rocky Mountain region and arguably in the contiguous United States — never had a period of operational decline; the Penrose family ownership ended in 1986 but the standards have continued under the Anschutz Corporation's stewardship since 2011. For multi-generation American family bookings, for golf-focused weekends at the highest specification, for the kind of corporate retreat that needs both meeting space and a private mountain camp, there is no comparable American Rocky Mountain address.
The Broadmoor is one of the very few American Forbes Five-Star resorts that genuinely scales for the multi-generation family booking — Cottages with three to five bedrooms along the lake, the Bee Bunch children's programme (ages 4–12), the Ranch at Emerald Valley as the all-day off-resort excursion, the falconry and shooting programmes, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (originally Penrose's private zoo, now an independent non-profit but still adjacent), the Seven Falls hike. Cottage Suites and the Estate House for the multi-generation booking; standard Main Building rooms for the shorter family stay.
For Rocky Mountain honeymoons that prefer the historic-grand-hotel register over the contemporary-luxury one — the Aman or the One&Only register — the Broadmoor is the obvious answer. Lakeside Suites in the Main Building are the central booking; Cloud Camp on top of Cheyenne Mountain for the more secluded second half of a longer trip; the Penrose Room for the formal anniversary-reset dinner; the Forbes Five-Star spa for the day-of treatment. Pair with a Pikes Peak cog-railway day for the Rocky Mountain version of the trip.
Anniversary weekends at the Broadmoor calibrate at every intensity from the standard king Lakeside room ($517) through the major-milestone Estate House booking ($25,000+/night for the full ten-bedroom mansion). The Penrose Room and Restaurant 1858 handle the formal dinner; the Tavern and the Golden Bee for the historical-immersion drinks; the Spa at the Broadmoor for the day-long treatment. The Broadmoor's institutional memory means a multi-decade-customer anniversary is recognised on arrival without prompting.
1 Lake Avenue
Colorado Springs, CO 80906
United States
15 minutes south of downtown Colorado Springs; 1 hour south of Denver International Airport (DEN); 20 minutes from Colorado Springs Airport (COS)
771 rooms across the campus
Classic Rooms from $517/night
Lakeside Premier rooms from $750/night
Cottage Suites from $1,200/night
Estate House (10 bedrooms) from $25,000/night
Check-in: 4:00 PM
Check-out: 11:00 AM
Opened 1918; 64 consecutive years Forbes Five-Star
AAA Five-Diamond
Three championship golf courses
Forbes Five-Star Spa at the Broadmoor
Forbes Five-Star Penrose Room
18 on-site dining options
Three Wilderness Experiences (Cloud Camp, Emerald Valley, Fly Fishing Camp)
43,000 sq ft spa
Falconry, shooting, fly fishing programmes
From $517/night for a Classic room. Cottage Suites and the Wilderness Experiences book five to seven months ahead for July, August, and Christmas weeks; the Estate House requires longer lead times.
Book This Hotel →AAA Four-Diamond 57-room resort overlooking Pikes Peak and the Garden of the Gods — the contemporary-luxury counterpart to the Broadmoor.
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