Honeyville Hermosa Colorado: The Family Honey Shop Guide

Every drive up Highway 550 toward Purgatory Resort passes one roadside landmark that has been tempting travelers since 1918: Honeyville, in Hermosa, ten miles north of Durango. This third-generation family honey factory, store, and working distillery sits directly under the red Hermosa Cliffs and bottles Rocky Mountain wildflower honey that locals and visitors describe as some of the best they have ever tasted. For the Caldwell family heading toward a ski vacation, it is the easiest and cheapest sightseeing stop on the whole drive up the Animas Valley.

TL;DR

Honeyville Hermosa Colorado is a family-run honey factory, tasting room, and distillery at 33633 Highway 550, about ten miles north of Durango on the drive to Purgatory. The Culhane family founded it in 1918 and now bottles roughly 85 products, from Cinnamon Whipped Honey to chokecherry jelly, plus house spirits from the on-site Honey House Distillery. Admission is free, tasting is free, and the drive up Highway 550 passes it either way.

Key Takeaways

• Honeyville Hermosa Colorado has bottled honey since 1918, making it a 106-year-old, third-generation family business run by the Culhane family.
• The factory store sits at 33633 Highway 550, ten miles north of Durango and directly under the Hermosa Cliffs, right on the road to Purgatory Resort.
• The on-site Honey House Distillery, opened in 2012, distills spirits from honey in a 250-gallon, beehive-shaped copper still.
• Tasting is free, and the store is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in summer and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in winter, closed Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• Nearly everything is also shipped nationwide from a mail-order list that has grown past 200,000 names.

Where is Honeyville Hermosa Colorado?

Honeyville sits at 33633 Highway 550 in Hermosa, ten miles north of Durango in the Animas River Valley. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad runs right past the front of the property, so if you time your stop for the morning departure, you can hear the steam whistle as the historic train rolls toward Silverton on its run covered in our Durango and Silverton train guide. The store and tasting room are located in the same building as the production factory and the distillery, with large windows that let you watch honey being bottled and jars moving down the line.

If you are already driving north toward Purgatory Resort on US 550, Honeyville is essentially a free add-on. There is no detour and no admission fee. You pull into the lot, walk in, and sample. For a family that wants to stretch their legs before the final climb to the ski area, it fills the gap perfectly between Durango's coffee strip and the resort turnoff.

What can you taste and buy at Honeyville?

Honeyville's catalog runs to about 85 products, built around a handful of signature lines. The flagship is Cinnamon Whipped Honey, the product Vernon Culhane first made famous, alongside Mountain Peach and Natural Whipped Honey. The famous Wild Chokecherry Jelly traces back to the chokecherry trees Vernon cultivated in his own backyard, and it remains one of the shop's best sellers. Beyond honey and jelly, the shelves hold jams, butters, syrups, barbecue and dipping sauces, drink mixers, and honey-based body care like lip balm, lotion, and bar soap.

The tasting room counter is the core of the visit. Staff pour samples of flavored whipped honeys and jellies, and the shop also carries Colorado wines and other regional specialty foods. Because everything is honey-based, the tasting loop is quick, kid-friendly, and genuinely useful for choosing a jar you will actually finish at home. A jar of Cinnamon Whipped Honey or Wild Chokecherry Jelly also makes an easy souvenir or holiday gift without weighing down your luggage.

Does Honeyville have a distillery?

Yes. Kevin Culhane opened the Honey House Distillery on site in 2012, the first registered legal distillery in La Plata County since Prohibition. He and his distilling partner commissioned a custom 250-gallon copper still shaped like a beehive, and every spirit in the line is built on Rocky Mountain Wildflower Honey. The distillery now contributes between 20 and 30 percent of Honeyville's overall sales.

The lineup includes Colorado Honey Bourbon Whiskey, an oak barrel-aged bourbon, Hex Vodka distilled from honey wine, Cinnamon Honey Whiskey, Colorado Botanical Gin, and a Cold Brew Coffee Liqueur made with Durango Joes Coffee that has won three gold medals, the same roaster we profile in our Durango coffee shops roundup. Honeyville also collaborates with other local makers, notably Ska Brewing, whose True Blonde Ale carries Honeyville honey. If one member of the family wants a flight while the others sample jam, the distillery counter is in the same building, so nobody has to split up.

What is the history behind Honeyville?

Honeyville began in 1918, when Vernon Culhane started keeping his own bees on the Florida Mesa and discovered the honey was the best he had ever tasted. He sold it from the back of a flatbed pickup at the Rio Grande Land Company near the downtown train depot, where locals filled their own containers straight from the truck. The business later passed to his son Danny in 1974, and Danny and his wife Sheree bought the company in 1986 and expanded the line to nearly everything sold today. Their son Kevin now runs the distillery alongside them, making Honeyville a genuine three-generation operation.

The building itself is substantial: 12,500 square feet of production and packaging space plus the tasting room, employing around 27 local people. The mail-order side has grown from an original list of 30 names to more than 200,000, with the Christmas season driving the biggest sales of the year.

Local's Take: Honeyville is the one stop on the drive north that works for a family with teenagers. There is no tour to sit through, no fee, and no real time commitment. Pull in, taste for ten minutes, buy a jar of Cinnamon Whipped Honey, and you are back on the road before the kids get bored. The distillery counter in the back is the quiet value-add for the adults.

Where does Honeyville's honey actually come from?

Honeyville's own hives no longer keep up with demand, so the company sources honey from family-owned beekeepers across the Rocky Mountain region, blending it to a consistent taste profile. The bees themselves work surprisingly close to home: all summer they travel only about two miles from their hives, visiting wildflowers and alfalfa, and Honeyville sources honey from beekeepers within a 500-mile radius of the facility.

The chokecherry product line is local in a more literal way. Honeyville buys chokecherries from anyone willing to harvest them, paying about $1.50 per pound and taking in roughly eight to nine thousand pounds in a good season. The juice goes into chokecherry whipped honey, jelly, syrup, a chipotle barbecue sauce, and a chokecherry lime cocktail mixer. That recipe is exactly the kind of place-based detail that makes a Honeyville jar different from honey off a grocery shelf.

Did the 416 Wildfire affect Honeyville?

Yes, and the story is part of why the shop matters to locals. On June 1, 2018, the 416 Fire ignited in the San Juan National Forest and swept down the Hermosa Valley along Highway 550 toward Durango, eventually burning 54,129 acres to rank among the largest wildfires in Colorado history. The fire ran through Honeyville's stretch of the valley, fire crews staged out of the company parking lot, and on June 5 a mandatory evacuation forced the factory to close for ten days during the height of summer tourist season. The business survived and kept bottling, and that resilience is now part of the place's local identity.

What are Honeyville's hours and where do you park?

Honeyville's storefront and tasting room are open Memorial Day through Labor Day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Labor Day through Memorial Day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Parking is a straightforward lot directly off Highway 550, with room for cars and RVs, and the entrance is clearly marked. The store phone is 800-676-7690.

Because Honeyville sits on the same road as Purgatory, it pairs naturally with other Animas Valley food stops. James Ranch, a short drive further up the valley, sells grass-fed beef, burgers, and its own market goods, so you can build a proper half-day food loop on the way to or from the mountain. In town, the Durango Farmers Market is the other anchor of the region's local-food culture if you are visiting on a Saturday morning.

Final takeaways

Honeyville Hermosa Colorado earns its spot on any Highway 550 drive because it costs nothing to visit, takes minutes, and gives you a genuinely local product to bring home. Taste the Cinnamon Whipped Honey and the Wild Chokecherry Jelly, glance at the beehive-shaped still in back, and buy a jar while the flavor is fresh in your memory. For a family already headed to Purgatory, it is the easiest stop you will make all trip, and it is right on the way.