Cripple Creek Donkeys: Why Burros Roam This Colorado Mountain Town

Cripple Creek, Colo., has a reputation that precedes itself by about 125 years.

The gambling, the gunslingers, the history that politely gets described as "colorful" whenever someone's grandma is in the room.

All of that is real. But there's a subplot that somehow keeps getting buried under the poker chips.

There are donkeys loose on the streets of Cripple Creek. On purpose.

Get our free mobile app

The Part Where the Miners Just ... Left

Getty Images

When the mining boom finally went bust around 1901, the operations shut down fast enough that someone apparently looked at the pack animals and thought "not my problem anymore."

The donkeys got released into town. Not relocated. Not auctioned. Just released, into a Colorado mountain town at 9,494 feet, like that was a totally normal thing to do.

It was. Kind of. And Cripple Creek never forgot it.

The Two Mile High Club Has Nothing to Do With Airplanes

Getty Images

Established in 1931, the Two Mile High Club exists specifically to care for the free-roaming donkeys that still wander the town today.

That's not a figure of speech. The donkeys still roam.

You can still feed them, provided you have the right snacks, which the Club helpfully pre-approves so nobody hands a donkey a Cheeto and causes an incident.

Each June, the town hosts Donkey Derby Days, a full weekend event that this year runs June 26 through June 28.

And every May, the Donkey Release happens, an annual reenactment of the 1901 walkaway that kicked all of this off.

Read More: History of Potter’s Field Cemetery in Grand Junction, Colorado

It's a Strange Kind of Tribute

Most towns build a statue.

Cripple Creek just keeps releasing the donkeys.

There's something genuinely honest about that, a refusal to sanitize the history into a plaque on a wall somewhere.

The donkeys don't care either way. They're just living their best life at altitude, same as they have been for over a century.