In 1959, at the age of 15, Jim Bishop bought a plot of land in the Wet Mountains, west of Pueblo, Colorado. He started building a stone cottage on the land in the mid sixties, and never stopped. In the more than four decades since he broke ground, that little cottage has transformed into a massive castle, and a wildly popular roadside attraction. Built entirely by Bishop himself, Bishop Castle—as it’s come to be known—is likely one of the largest one-man building projects in the world.
Bishop himself is also something of a folk hero, admired for the audacity of his project and widely known for his ecstatic, anti-government rants. However, in 2014, Jim was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, which has left him weak and unable to work on his Castle. Then, in April of this year, word began to spread that the Bishops believed their castle had been stolen. In this episode of Wish We Were Here, we tell the remarkable story of Bishop Castle, and the strange dispute over who owns it.