The work horse of the Colorado mines was NOT a horse

Gold was discovered in Colorado in 1859 at 9,000 feet up and thousands, upon thousands, came up...everywhere. And with them came the animals that would be their hardest working companion, their uncanny protector and their best friend. The mule and his cousins, the burro, donkey and jackass.

The chosen animal to take tourists into the depths of the Grand Canyon 100 years ago and today on those slender cliffside paths has always been the mule. The horse slips, and scares, too easily.

Possibly the best known mountain man and scout of the old west is Kit Carson.  He is often pictured riding a big, bold horse.  Wrong. He never rode a horse.  He always chose a mule. For thousands and thousands of miles. Back and forth across all of America.

Stubborn as a mule? How about smart as a mule.  Muleteers, muleskinners, mule riders, those who know them best, swear they have an uncanny sense of danger. Stories of men being saved by mules able to step around snakes, and not into ambush abound. They have and will withstand in-equine as well as in-human amounts of work. 

 Mules work alone or in teams well. They work longer hours on less food and water than any animal but the camel.

 Mules and burros were the primary choice of working companion among trappers and panners of gold. Mules ruled the west where the work was hardest, and there were no silver decorated stirrups, or neatly carved saddles for them.

Today, in one of the original Colorado mining towns, about 45 minutes west of Denver, we found the close cousin of the mule, the burro, RACING. Yes, the miners raced their animals the same way 150 years ago.

Today the Idaho Springs Tommyknocker Brewery sponsored its annual Oh My Gawd Road Burro Race carrying packs of specified weights their masters and friends led a couple of dozen of them as fast as possible up and up into the mountain. And we got caught behind it as we were heading home from church.

Mules, donkeys, burros and jackasses all placed higher in the value of the miner and the mining community than any horse.  In fact, in the Central Colorado range called South Park, in the town of Fairplay, we saw a monument to one of their order, Prunes. Prunes' best human friend, his owner, died in Fairplay. After decades of seeing master and burro together the town adopted Prunes and when he died in 1930 they buried him with honors and the monument below still honors his memory.

Mules, and all their kin, were the workhorses of the mountains wherever mining or other truly hard work had be done.  

Today machines have replaced much of the work of mules.  Even by the second half of the 1800's mines were using steam 'donkey engines' to eliminate costly animal and man power. Like this one I photographed this morning before going to church at a mine building just a few hundred yards from the O'Rourke home in Russell Gulch; before we headed off to church; only to meet its flesh and blood predecessors slowing us down as we followed them up the OMG Road.

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And today its why Kawasaki calls this machine

a mule.

-Ken