Here’s a unique town, unlike anyplace else in the American West. It’s a cocktail of cowboy grit, Euro panache, Hollywood glam, Ivy League brains, fresh powder, live music and lots of money. It’s the kind of place where no matter the season you can bring on a head rush in countless ways.

Perhaps you dropped into a near-vertical run in the Highland Bowl, or huffed up to the top of Buckskin Pass in under three hours. It could also come while relaxing at the local music festival, peering down into a ginormous superpipe or ripping around a banked turn on a mountain bike. Nestled in the heart of the White River National Forest and surrounded by the peaks of the Elk Mountains, Aspen is well known as a ski destination, but the town’s history and offerings go much deeper. Aspen, in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, is a ski resort town and a year-round destination for outdoor recreation. It’s known for its high-end restaurants, boutiques, and landmarks like the 1889 Wheeler Opera House, built during the area’s silver mining boom. Its Wheeler-Stallard House is a local history museum set in a 19th-century, Queen Anne–style home, while the Aspen Art Museum displays works from contemporary artists.

The City of Aspen is the Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. Aspen is situated in a remote area of the Rocky Mountains’ Sawatch Range and Elk Mountains, along the Roaring Fork River at an elevation just below 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level on the Western Slope, 11 miles (18 km) west of the Continental Divide.