The Lions Club Burro Races
Near Beatty, Nevada
From nineteen sixty-one to nineteen seventy-two, Beatty hosted an annual international burro race that became, briefly and improbably, one of the more talked-about sporting events in the American desert. The race was organized by the local chapter of the Lions Club, which was looking for an event that would bring visitors to a small town with little to recommend it after the mines had closed.
A burro race is exactly what the name suggests. Contestants lead pack burros over a course through the desert, and the team that finishes first wins. The skills required are part running, part animal psychology, and part negotiation, since burros are famously resistant to moving quickly in directions they have not chosen themselves. The combination produces a spectacle that is equal parts athletic competition and public comedy.
The Beatty race drew competitors from across the western United States and eventually from other countries. In nineteen seventy-two, the event received national attention when Playboy magazine published a feature about it, which brought a wave of publicity to a desert gateway town that had not expected to be famous for anything since the gold rush. The race ran for twelve years before the Lions Club discontinued it.
The same era of local initiative also produced the Beatty Library, housed in a geodesic dome, making it the only public library in Nevada built in that architectural form. Beatty has always been a town that finds creative uses for what it has.
