Couple sets out to visit all 273 incorporated towns in Colorado this year

I get stressed out when I look at my calendar and have two or three big things planned in a year. There’s a couple that has 273 trips planned around Colorado and they’re doing it all for fun!

Seth Varner and his wife, Eliese are preparing to crisscross the Centennial State this year as part of their latest “Wandermore” project — an ambitious effort to visit, photograph and document every one of Colorado’s 273 incorporated communities before the end of 2026.

The Nebraska-based couple plans to capture each town’s character through photographs of architecture, landmarks, local restaurants and conversations with residents. They are asking locals from every community to help them along the way — recommending hidden gems, arranging meetups and sharing stories that might not show up in a guidebook.

“We will be visiting and documenting the history of all 273 of Colorado’s incorporated communities,” Varner wrote in a social media post announcing the project in late March. “We want to capture what all 273 communities looked like in 2026.”

The idea is not new for Varner. What started as a pandemic-era road trip with a friend through all 531 towns in his home state of Nebraska has become a full-time career.Wandermore Publishing LLC. In 2020, Varner was a college freshman sent home by COVID-19 lockdowns. Bored and inspired by childhood road trips with his father, he asked a friend a simple question: “Want to visit every town in Nebraska this summer?”

The answer was yes, and Wandermore Publishing was born.

Since then, Varner has completed similar projects in Iowa, both Dakotas, Kansas and, most recently, Minnesota — where he spent nine and a half months visiting all 856 incorporated communities, meeting roughly 700 people, eating at more than 200 local restaurants, touring nearly 70 museums and taking approximately 115,000 photographs. Each project culminates in a book that serves as part travel guide, part history book and part photo album, all self-published through his own company.

Colorado marks a departure from the Midwest, where most of his previous work has been concentrated. The state’s geography — spanning prairie towns on the Eastern Plains, old mining communities tucked into mountain valleys and fast-growing Front Range suburbs — promises a wider range of settings than any project before it.

The couple said the project will begin in the coming weeks. They are encouraging Colorado residents who want to share their town’s story to reach out through the Wandermore in Colorado Facebook page.‎

Varner said the goal has always been the same: to encourage people to explore their home state and to preserve a snapshot of community life that might otherwise go unrecorded.