The Egyptian Mummy on Rosemount's Third Floor

Most people come to the Rosemount for the mansion itself, and that is reason enough. The 1893 home that banker John A. Thatcher built for his family runs about 24,000 square feet across three stories, faced in rough pink rhyolite, with 37 rooms of cherry, mahogany, oak, and maple woodwork still in place. Architect Henry Hudson Holly designed it, and most of the furnishings never left.

But keep climbing. The surprise is on the third floor.

Up there sits the Andrew McClelland Collection, gathered by a Pueblo businessman and friend of the family who spent years traveling the world and bringing pieces home. The rooms hold curiosities he collected on those trips, including an Egyptian mummy he is said to have shipped back to share with the city in the early 1900s. It is an odd, wonderful thing to find at the top of a Colorado steel-era mansion, and it tells you something about how a small Western city saw itself reaching out to the wider world.

It makes for an easy indoor stop, and it rounds out Pueblo’s history alongside the steelworks and the old trading-post story. For current tour days, hours, admission, and to confirm what is on display upstairs, check the Rosemount Museum’s official site at rosemount.org.