Now both towns have their own races, part of an annual series of eight in Colorado. The real story is that the race was inspired by a desire to keep former mining towns from turning into ghosts. Legend holds that it was inspired by two miners who struck gold simultaneously and raced back to town to claim the find. Originally the race extended between Leadville and Fairplay, located in the middle of the state and only about 11 miles apart as the crow flies, but separated by a mountain. “ Haulin’ Ass” is the title of a very straight documentary about the sport. There are eight of these eye-rollers in this article if you’d like to spot them all.īut it’s still a serious sport, even if it has a sense of humor. Wann’s title is media relations officer for the Western Pack Burro Ass-ociation. For example, the winner of the annual pack burro championship is the first to get his or her ass over the finish line. The race also lends itself to a variety of puns. The first race was in 1949, which makes it, according Wann, the second-oldest continuously run marathon in the country after the Boston Marathon. Burros have the ability to reach into your soul.” “They teach us so much,” said pack burro race director Brad Wann. When the US mining industry started to dry up in the 1930s and ’40s, some enterprising Coloradans came up with the idea of attracting spectators to their towns by hosting an ultramarathon of human-donkey pairs – The World Championship Pack Burro Race. In fact, they’re the camels of the East, North and South, too, as donkeys continue to thrive in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.Īs some industries faded, the donkey soon added racing partner to its resume. Like a cross between a Tesla and a wheelbarrow, donkeys are beasts of burden that can carry up to 300 pounds for more than two weeks in the mountains, while needing very little food or water. And they don’t get nearly the respect they deserve, the Rodney Dangerfields of the animal kingdom. They seem to have a calming effect on horses and humans. They’re still used in military operations to carry ground air missiles over difficult terrain.īurros, as the Spanish call them, walk at about a human’s foot speed. They’ve been the family car, our U-Haul vans, engines pulling barges in canals and wagons out West, and they’ve been our workmates – if you work in a mine or on a farm. I checked.ĭomesticated for about 5,000 years, donkeys have been put to work for humanity’s historically changing needs. And its Sunday school lore that his mother rode one from Nazareth while pregnant, though that’s not in the official canon. The significance was that it was a common man’s animal for the common man’s king, rather than a more traditionally royal steed. According to the Bible, Jesus rode one, not a horse, into Jerusalem. On top of it all, burros tend to be friendly and bond easily with people, making them trusty companions to many a lonely prospector.Consider the glorious but humble donkey. Burros can also do many things in the dark, and some of them spent nearly all their lives underground in pitch black mines. Once a mine was established, burros could be counted on to perform tasks like hauling ore in and out of lengthy shafts, transporting supplies to and from mining camps, and carrying weary miners between camps and towns. These tough explorers depended on their burros to haul gear, water, machinery, and (hopefully) ore - and even to fend off threatening critters. It often meant wandering around in the remote, rugged desert from place to place, scratching around in search of something shiny. The life of a prospector was a tough one. Give a handful of jacks and jennies a little bit of privacy and a few generations, and voila - you wind up with a whole lot more of ’em! Prospectors and their Burro friend on the Nevada frontier Burros: A Miner’s Best Friend Over the years, especially as the mining days began to wane, many burros escaped or were simply turned loose. Unsurprisingly, in the 19th century, when prospectors and miners poured into Nevada, the mighty burro was king. For starters, these badass beasts can carry around 150 pounds of gear each, even during stretches with little food and water, through both searingly hot and bitterly cold climates. They also used plenty of horses for overland travel, but serious jobs called for the burro. Why Are There So Many Wild Burros In Nevada?Īs we mentioned, Spanish explorers and settlers employed burros as pack animals out west in the 1500s.
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