The Great Burro Derby

During the mining days burros escaped or were turned loose by prospectors all over the Death Valley area. The sagacious critters found water holes, prospered and multiplied. A recent National Park Service census indicated 900 within Death Valley National Monument's 2,900 square miles. Dogged for some time by the problem of a burro population explosion in the monument area, the Park Service permits controlled trapping and sale of burros to youth camps and similar worthy causes.

Only a couple of miles outside of Beatty lives Tex Gates, the world's greatest burro trapper. Tex Gates is six feet three inches tall and has clear blue eyes that can spot a wild burro at a distance of five miles. His pretty wife, Margaret, five feet two and 105 pounds, comes from Rochester, Minn. where, in her single years, she lavished her affections on an Arabian horse. She rode the horse from Rochester to Tucson, Ariz., averaging 40 miles a day for 1,800 miles. Remaining in the Southwest, she met and fell in love with the tall handsome burro trapper. They were married and went burro trapping on their wedding trip. (This is another distinction claimed by Beatty—it is the only town in the world with a couple who trapped burros on their honeymoon.)

At the time the restless Lions of Beatty were looking for a way to put their town on the map, Tex and Margaret Gates had 100 wild burros pastured on the flats near town. It was the presence of such a big herd on the outskirts that sparked the idea for the great race. The Lions arranged with Tex to furnish and handle the burros. From Granville B. Liles, superintendent of the Death Valley Monument, they got permission to run the race into park property. Although it is not the habit of the Park Service to foster burro races, Liles took history into consideration and granted the request. But he had the Lions Club put up a $300 bond to insure that burros would not be running loose after the race.

The men of Beatty began growing beards, and the women rummaged in trunks for old-fashioned long dresses and bonnets. A burro race poster contest was held among the school children, and the crayon drawings, some of them darned good, were hung in the general store and pasted up behind the slot machines in the windows of the Exchange Club. Little Darlene Brown won first prize in the poster contest.

Burros were staked out in yards and on street corners where tourists could see both them and the signs proclaiming Beatty the burro capital of the world. Handbills were printed, and a man led a baby burro around the streets all day long. Norman Revert, president of the Lions Club, put all the Lions to work rounding up sponsors, drawing up racing rules and the thousand other chores attendant upon an event of this magnitude.

Race headquarters were set up in a booth at the end of the bar in the Exchange Club. Thirty-nine sponsors each paid $150 to enter a wrangler in the race. The wrangler who led his burro to victory would get the prize money; his sponsor would get the publicity. A fee of $150 was considered dirt cheap for being allowed to participate in such an affair.

The starting day of the race dawned bright and clear, as almost every day does in the desert. The whole town turned out early. Laughter echoed through the hills as the wranglers wrestled to get the pack saddles on the burros. The burro—or donkey, as it is called in the effete East—is unpredictable. The burros provided for the race by Tex Gates were all wild jacks, frisky stallions capable of almost anything from utter docility to open rebellion.

Thirty-nine burros were finally saddled, and 39 wranglers stood holding the halter ropes. A volley of pistol shots fired by the judges sent the burros and men on their way out of town. The crowd in cars, trucks and campers took after them, and the whole shebang disappeared in the direction of Daylight Pass. That, gentle reader, was the last the town of Beatty ever saw of its great burro race.

Sometimes the burros were willing to be led by the wranglers. Sometimes a burro would decide the pace was slow and try to lead his wrangler. At other times a burro would not move at all, and for agonizing minutes the wrangler would pull and push, pray and swear, as the others passed him by. Even before they reached the Bullfrog Hills, a burro that had gained temporary liberty streaked across the landscape pursued by a posse of judges on horseback.

Through the ruins of Rhyolite and past the famed Bullfrog Mine, the wranglers struggled on, followed by tourists who occasionally stepped from their cars to take pictures of the action.