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| Wild Burros of Big Bear Lake, California grazing in a lakeside meadow. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks via GEMINI (2026) |
Big Bear Lake Burros
Amber Woods’s April 6, 2025
"The Hungary Mountaineer" dispatch from Big Bear Lake - "Big Bear’s Wild Burros: Gold Rush Legends With Hooves and
Attitude" - treats the mountain’s wild burros not as scenery but as the
original landlords - fuzzy outlaws who arrived with the Gold Rush pack
trains and never quite clocked out.
Long before snowboarders, cabin
influencers, and borrowed moon boots, prospectors dragged these animals into
Holcomb Valley to haul ore, supplies, and the occasional jar of homemade
moonshine while men named Earl “supervised” from a stump. The miners got the
plaques. The burros did the work.
What followed, Woods notes with unwholesome relish, was local history at its
least house-trained. Old Miners Days did not confine the animals to a polite
parade. Contestants were sent into the wilderness to locate a feral donkey,
negotiate its cooperation, pack it like a nineteenth-century mule, and then
lead it ten kilometers toward town: a marathon married to an equine hostage
situation. The old hands were not horse whisperers. They were ass
whisperers. PETA, unamused, eventually declared the whole carnival an
affront; by the 1990s the races were banned and the animals left to multiply
in the east valley with the enthusiasm of tourists booking lakefront cabins
on a holiday weekend. One jack, Woods records, may cover forty jennies in a
season. Mountain lions are scarce. The population did what sourdough starter
did in lockdown.
A late-1990s roundup shipped many of them toward Reche Canyon. Sightings
receded into Bigfoot territory. Then the pandemic arrived, and by 2020 the
valley again hosted nearly as many jackasses as case counts - tourists not
exclusively included. By 2025 the unofficial census sat at 150 to 200
animals who appear uninvited, eat everything in sight, roll their eyes at
local politics, and decline to leave, rather like cousin Randy at
Thanksgiving. They stroll café parking lots as if brunch were booked. They
inspect Subarus with HOA severity. They occupy the roadway with the serenity
of crossing guards who have nowhere else to be.
Woods is fond of them and not sentimental. The charm is real: weanlings
loitering on Fairway Boulevard like unemployed teenagers; neighborhood
summits to name the babies; a 4-H partisan named Bobbi Jean briefly
proposing a sex check, gently blocked by the
no-touching-the-miniature-mountain-donkeys rule. Pet one ear, Woods warns,
and custom bunk beds and “emotional support human” status cannot be far
behind. The greater threat is not the occasional mountain lion but tourists
with leftover fries, fajita scraps, and the conviction that Disney eyes
entitle a breakfast burrito. Food turns fearless animals into four-legged
panhandlers. Cars become drive-thrus. Highways collect the bill. Nature, she
observes, was not prepared for DoorDash donkey culture. They do not need Big
Macs, kale slaw, or oat-milk muffins.
The recommended encounter is a guided viewing hike through Holcomb Valley
and the east-end pines: Gold Rush lore, if the herd cooperates, and the odd
trail blockade by a donkey auditioning for *Real Housewives of Holcomb
Valley*. Winter brings them lower. They do not scamper. They stare as if the
hiker were the trespasser. Rules of coexistence are few and unfashionable:
do not feed; do not ride (the look says, “Absolutely not, Brenda”); do not
corner foals for selfies. A bite can cost a finger. Ten is a useful number.
Woods’s closing verdict is the article’s point in miniature. The burros are
not Instagram extras. They are the last ungovernable remnant of the mining
era—stubborn, hilarious, and still, if people can keep their snacks to
themselves, gloriously untamed.
Big Bear Lake Burros
LYRICS
**Verse 1**
They came up the canyon when the gold fever ran,
Packs on their shoulders through Holcomb’s rough land.
San Bernardino granite and a sky without end—
Wild burros of Big Bear, the mountain’s old friends.
**Chorus**
Clip-clop, clip-clop, hear the high-country beat,
Summer flags flying down the lakeside street.
Old Miner’s Days shining, the valley in bloom—
Gold Rush legends with hooves and room to roam.
From desert to timber, from then until now,
Big Bear Lake burros take a bow!
**Verse 2**
Imported by fortune, they learned every grade,
Ore in the panniers and a trail newly made.
Pines on the ridgeline, the lake flashing blue—
Southern California with a wild West view.
**Chorus**
Clip-clop, clip-clop, hear the high-country beat,
Summer flags flying down the lakeside street.
Old Miner’s Days shining, the valley in bloom—
Gold Rush legends with hooves and room to roam.
From desert to timber, from then until now,
Big Bear Lake burros take a bow!
**Bridge**
Brass bands and banners when the warm season calls,
History dancing in the festival halls.
A living parade through the San Bernardino highs—
Four-legged heritage under Fourth-of-July skies.
**Verse 3**
They wander the meadows when the snowline retreats,
East-valley shadows and the sun on their feet.
Keep a kind distance, let the wild stay wild—
The mountain still smiles on each jenny and child.
**Final Chorus**
Clip-clop, clip-clop, hear the high-country beat,
Summer flags flying down the lakeside street.
Old Miner’s Days shining, the valley in bloom—
Gold Rush legends with hooves and room to roam.
From Holcomb to shoreline, the story holds true—
Big Bear’s wild burros, we’re singing for you!
ENDS
RUMBLE
REELS
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