Donkey Derby Days

A derby team on Bennett Avenue is two people and one donkey. One is the handler and one is the runner, and between them walks a pack donkey that they must coax and persuade toward a finish line it has no reason to reach first. The Two Mile High Club stages the races, and its own page concedes there is no accounting for stubborn donkeys along the way. The races are the center of Donkey Derby Days, a free festival held each June in Cripple Creek. It is the club’s largest fundraiser of the year, and the money goes to the care of the town’s donkeys.

The festival fills Bennett between 2nd and 5th Streets. Vendors along those blocks sell boho clothing, jewelry, soap, candles, wood carvings, and metal signs. The food includes crepes, Mexican plates, barbecue, sausages, and turkey legs. The 2026 festival ran June 26 through 28. On Saturday and Sunday the mornings started at the Cripple Creek Fire Station, where a pancake breakfast ran from 7:00 to 10:00. On Saturday the club held a silent auction on the lower level of the Double Eagle Casino. The 2027 festival is set for June 25–27.

Three stages and a parade

In 2026 music came from three stages. On Friday the Main Stage beer garden opened at 4:00. At 5:45 the festival recognized first responders. From 6:00 to 8:00 the stage belonged to Wild Blue, the United States Air Force Academy’s commercial band of active-duty musicians. Also on Friday, Honey & Ruin played the Double Eagle Stage. The group’s members are Jaime Brown, who has lived in Teller County since 1983, has worked at Johnny Nolon’s Casino since 1998, and has performed at the Butte Theater since 2007; Emily Heida, the Butte’s technical director; and Madelyn Sneckner of Castle Rock. Through the weekend the Butte ran Under the Colorado Moon, with 1:00 matinees on festival days.

The Saturday parade ran from 11:00 to noon along Bennett, west to east. It carried a Color Guard, old-fashioned floats, horses, historical re-enactments, music, and classic cars. The stages started after the parade. Mimic, a classic-rock cover band from Colorado Springs formed in April 2022, calls itself “classics playing classics.” JUSTUS, a four-piece country and rock band together more than 20 years, followed Mimic on the Main Stage. The Martini Shot closed that stage from 6:30 to 8:00. It is a six-piece party band from Pueblo and Colorado Springs with its horns up front, and it takes its name from the Hollywood term for the last scene shot in a day. On the Pocket Park Stage, Carmen & Lewis played the early set. They are a father and daughter, and Lewis Mock spent nearly 30 years as house guitarist at the Broadmoor Hotel. Boomtown String Band played guitar, bass, fiddle, mandolin, and banjo at 12:30 on the Double Eagle Stage and again at 5:45 at Pocket Park. The club later said the band went “stage-hopping” that day.

On Sunday the program included Dakota Blonde, an acoustic trio whose members met through careers in music therapy. Annette and Doug Conlon also played. In an earlier band, Eden Automatic, the Conlons opened for the Pretenders, the B-52s, Missing Persons, and Duran Duran. The festival closed at 5:00.

The derby heats

The donkey derby took up Saturday afternoon. Qualifying races ran at 12:30 and 1:30, followed by a Media Race at 2:30 and a Military/First Responders Race at 3:30. At 4:30 came the Trophy Race, the championship heat for the first three finishers from the two qualifiers. A Fun Race at 5:30 ended the day. On Sunday a Casino Race ran at 2:00 and another Fun Race at 3:00.

Six miles with a pick, a pan, and a shovel

At noon on Sunday, June 28, 2026, the club brought back a Professional Pack Burro Race. Organizer Brad Wann billed it as the first professional pack burro race in Cripple Creek since 2007. Each team was one runner and one burro. The teams lined up at 172 E. Bennett Avenue facing west and set off at a blank-gun start on a six-mile course. The route left town north on N. C Street to Galena Avenue and McKenney Street. It came back south on Main Street, turned west on Galena at the Gold King Mountain Inn, and ran down C Street and along Bennett to the finish. The lead teams were expected back on the east side of town around 12:45.

Under the rules, every burro carries a packsaddle loaded with a prospector’s pick, gold pan, and shovel, and toys are not permitted. A team that loses any of the three is disqualified. The lead rope may be no longer than 15 feet. The runner may push, pull, or carry the burro across the line but may not ride it, and the burro’s nose decides the winner. Burros cannot be swapped between runners. On that point the rules quote Curtis Imrie: “You gotta dance with the one that brung ya.” Prize money ran from $600 for first place down to $100 for sixth.

The Poop Drop ran at the start line from 12:00 to 12:15. Five hundred squares, each two feet on a side, were taped on the ground, and the square that collected the most manure paid $500. A pickup contest followed. Two-person teams chose from four kinds of tools left a block away, and the team that gathered the most in ten minutes won $100.

The race page calls pack burro racing a sport indigenous to Colorado. Prospectors’ burros carried the supplies, so the miners walked and led them. Legend has it that two miners struck gold in the same spot and raced each other back to town to file the claim. In 2012 Colorado recognized pack burro racing as its official summer heritage sport.

The herd after the mines

According to the club, the donkeys of Cripple Creek’s gold rush climbed narrow trails under heavy loads. Underground, they hauled ore carts through the tunnels before electric trams replaced them. In the late 1920s, modern mining methods and falling gold production ended that work. The miners turned the donkeys loose on the hillsides, and the animals went back to their wild ways, though many stayed near town. The Two Mile High Club formed in 1931 to care for them. Visit Colorado Springs says the present herd is believed to be distantly related to the gold-rush donkeys.

The club lists 16 donkeys and 100 members. Vet care, food, and shelter cost about $3,000 per donkey each year, and all of it comes from donations, memberships, sponsorships, and grants. From Memorial Day to mid-October the herd roams the streets of town. The club asks visitors to feed the donkeys only approved donkey biscuits, and no carrots, apples, or bananas, because those are high in sugar. The rest of the year the donkeys live at a winter pasture west of town, on County Road 89.

The festival began in the same year the club formed. By 1931 Bob Womack’s 1890 strike in Poverty Gulch was four decades past, and the Short Line railroad and the district trolleys had stopped in the early 1920s. Visit Colorado Springs credits local businessman Charley Lehew with the idea. He thought a festival would bring people to Cripple Creek, and he and some partners chose donkey racing as the main event. They built a donkey race track and found sponsors, food, and entertainment vendors. The city’s history says local businessmen launched the celebration in 1931 and that it stalled during the Great Depression before reviving. The pack burro race page notes that the event has not run continuously. Since legalized gambling came to Cripple Creek in 1991, many of the historic buildings along Bennett have become casinos, and the festival now hands out its trophies among them. The city’s listing for the June 2026 festival called it the 95th annual Donkey Derby Days.