O to the pack-burro races

Residents, visitors to Georgetown get into the mining spirit

BY DEB HURLEY BROBST DBROBST@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Runners come to Georgetown for the pack burro race, fans come for the burros and Clear Creek Rotary 2000 members come for the burro poop.

e 17th annual pack burro race on May 27 brought 78 participants, some of them local, with others from around Colorado and from Western states, all ready to make the eightmile journey from Georgetown to Empire and back with their fourlegged friends. e fastest time was 1 hour, 13 minutes.

Burro-race fans took lots of photos, petted the pack animals and admired the sight they don’t often see in Georgetown.

en there’s Clear Creek Rotary 2000. Why not take the steaming piles left along the road as the burros run by and turn them into a fundraiser? Rotary members mark 600 squares along one block of Sixth Street with painter’s tape, and for $10 per square, viewers can bet that their square will have the largest amount of dung left after the race starts. e winner gets $300; the club gets $5,700 to use for scholarships.

Clear Creek Rotary is an integral part of making sure the Georgetown burro race is something special.

Melissa Keuroglian, the Georgetown Community School director and a Rotary member, said her rst weekend in Georgetown was Memo- rial Day 2022, and she attended the burro race.

“It’s been easy to embrace this little town,” she said, “and the burro race is one of the unique things that puts us on the map.”

History of burro racing

Pack burro racing is a sport native to Colorado, though it’s unclear how it originally started. According to so- cial media, the most likely scenario is that two miners found gold and raced with their burros in tow to see who could get to the claims o ce rst. “Burro” is Spanish for “donkey.” e Western Pack Burro Ass-ociation (the name is trademarked) was formed more than 50 years ago to better organize the races, track race results, establish guidelines for how competitors should conduct themselves and enforce rules for how burros should be treated, according to the WPBA website. Racing continues to grow across the United States, with races seeing more competitors each year.

In 2012, pack burro racing was named the o cial summer heritage sport in Colorado.

Burro race runners is was Kristin Trapp’s rst time in the Georgetown burro race, though she’s raced elsewhere. e Tucson, Arizona, resident said her son also was participating in the race.

“I love to run in them,” she said, noting that her burro Leo was a good donkey.

Nikki Ruelle of Georgetown was running for the rst time with umper the burro.

Ground-level ozone is invisible and the Front Range’s biggest air quality issue. Created from pollutants like car exhaust, ozone is a leading cause of respiratory problems.