Columnist Susan Snyder: Beatty living on burro time

Friday, Oct. 26, 2001 | 9:35 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

The gold mine is closed and the miners are gone, but Beatty still has its burro races.

And if you get moving early enough Saturday, you can drive a couple of hours north and get a good seat for the Beatty Burro Races, which start at noon.

Hey, this will beat watching sharks in a tank or lions under glass. Promise.

Burros' backs are fitted with X-shaped pieces of wood, onto which the racers lash a pile of mining and camping gear. We're talking bulky, early 1900s stuff, not compact, lightweight modern stuff.

"A lot of people don't tie it down, and they end up with the stuff falling off. They have to stop in the middle of the obstacle course and start over by loading the burro again," Kimberly Hickinbotham, event spokeswoman, said.

Racers then lead their typically unwilling burros around a course set out with barrels. Once said pack animal is dragged, er, "led" to the end of the course the racer must build a fire in a pit, cook a pancake and feed it to the burro.

"This is all while the burro is trying to run away or is trying to eat the pancake while it's cooking," Hickinbotham said.

Burros eat pancakes?

"They eat just about anything," she said. "But I've heard they love the smell of flapjacks."

The races started shortly after 1900 as an event for annual miners' picnics, Hickinbotham said. The obstacle course used to be a three-mile route that traversed a creek.

Modern-day contests were conducted in the town's horse corral, but that has deteriorated since the gold mine closed down two years ago.

So this year's event will be on the town's baseball diamond and combined with the annual Beatty Days celebration, she said. There isn't enough money or volunteers to host the events separately this year.

But the craft fair, live band and historic costume fashion show should round-out the racing for a full day of activities that just might be worth the drive.

Hickinbotham, a Beatty native who turns 21 in November, is an art history student at UNLV. But she remains involved in all of her hometown's functions and works as a historian for the neighboring ghost town of Rhyolite.

"Beatty has one grocery store in the Gas Stop, six bars, five churches and one museum," Hickinbotham said. "There's also a clinic run by a PA at the top of the hill."

What do you mean, "Which hill?" The hill, silly.

Hickinbotham wants to be a museum curator one day. She says she'll likely head to New York City to do her museum internships and graduate work in history.

But she'll come back to Las Vegas when she is finished. She wants to open a museum here that tracks U.S. history from pilgrims and Plymouth Rock to flappers and prohibition.

She envisions a re-enactment experience, where costumed tour guides give presentations on each era.

"The best way to learn about history is to get involved with it," Hickinbotham said.

Might as well start this weekend with a burro race.

Take U.S. 95 north for about two hours. You'll find it.

And watch where you step.