Friendship House at the Home

Cañon City sits along the Arkansas River in Fremont County, a rafting and rock-climbing gateway anchored by the Royal Gorge, and Friendship House at the Home occupies a spot on North 15th Street inside a much older story than most senior communities carry. The community operates on Cañon City's historic IOOF Home campus, built by Colorado's Independent Order of Odd Fellows fraternal organization to care for its members and the wider community, and today it houses 36 residents receiving assisted living.

The care team keeps residents on track with their medications, steps in for bathing and dressing when it's needed, and watches over everyday movement through the building, and unlike many nearby Fremont County homes, Friendship House accepts Medicaid alongside residents who pay privately. Memory care and independent living apartments aren't part of the picture here, so the 36 residents in the building are all receiving assisted living.

Visitors describe a quaint, welcoming house rather than an institutional building, and the community regularly opens its space to outside groups, including small local church gatherings, which gives it a lived-in, community-anchored feel beyond its own resident roster. Meals draw particular praise, and the caregiving team earns repeat mentions as wonderful and attentive toward the people they support.

Families drawn to a fraternal-order tradition and a Medicaid-friendly assisted living option tend to feel most at home here, especially set against newer, corporate-built properties elsewhere in the county. Memory care and independent living apartments simply aren't offered in this building, a detail worth raising early with your senior advisor if either one matters to your search. The IOOF Home campus sits close enough to Saint Thomas More Hospital for quick access when a need arises, and the historic downtown blocks along Main Street give visiting family a place to grab a meal or browse a shop before heading back.

Friendship House at the Home carries the Independent Order of Odd Fellows' fraternal tradition of caring for its own into the present day, combining Medicaid access with a quaint, historic building that has served Cañon City for generations.