Entry No. 16 — the Durango file — filed under: history
Ouray Alchemist Museum
“700-plus hand-blown bottles still holding their original drugs.”
Curtis Haggar spent fifty years assembling Colorado's largest pharmacy museum, then installed it behind a Main Street gift shop under a copper dome guarded by gargoyles. Inside: 700-plus hand-blown bottles still holding their original drugs, the state's oldest prescription (1867, opium and camphor), a Persian bezoar stone, and an actual Spanish fly in a bottle. He and his wife Nancy, both retired pharmacists, run the private two-hour tours themselves, narrating frontier remedies that would be felonies now.
The move: Book the morning tour, let a real pharmacist talk you through two hours of frontier quackery, then go soak it off at the hot springs up Main Street.
📍 Before you go Entry is through the gift shop at 533 Main, past the restored 1888 Aspen Drug fixtures; look for the gargoyles and copper dome on the roofline. Tours are private, owner-guided, and run about two hours, so reserve ahead rather than walking in, and leave small kids behind because of all the fragile glass. From Durango you arrive via the Million Dollar Highway over Red Mountain Pass, which is half the date itself. Pair the tour with a soak at the Ouray Hot Springs at the north end of town.
- 📍 Ouray
- 💸 $
- ⚡ Up for anything
- 🌗 Indoors
Where: 533 Main St, Ouray, CO 81427
Hours: Added 2026-06-11 — confirm current hours before you go.
⚠ Seasonal or scheduled — always check before you go.
Plan a visit & invite your people →
Proof: source 1 · source 2 · source 3
last checked: 2026-06-11