I don’t know about you, but my spouse has occasionally warned me, “Don’t make an ass of yourself.”
Now, visiting Mesquite, Nevada—and its quartet of casinos tempting Arizona, Utah and Nevada I-15 travelers to detour for a bit of gambling—might pay off or deplete that RVing gas and groceries budget.
Hence the risk, amigos. Dreams of fortune versus, in my case, the wrath of my wife, she of Norwegian ancestry and the dormant genes of the Valkyrie: DNA and ancestry best left to rest in Valhalla—trust me.
So, on an overnight stay in this Virgin River Valley town of 20,000 on the northeastern fringe of the Mojave Desert, I found the perfect—and an educational—compromise: the Donkey History Museum.
Nestled in the Brickyard Plaza strip mall at 355 W. Mesquite Blvd., it was just a half-mile west of the historic Golden West Restaurant & Casino, and a shade under two miles east of the sprawling CasaBlanca Resort & Casino complex.
The Donkey History Museum
As I walked inside, museum staffers Barb Hermon and April Wyld assure me that I had escaped morphing into an ass. Indeed, they add, I had stumbled upon a treasure trove of donkey, burro, and even mule history.
The walls are full of photos, from color portraits of wild burros that roam the region’s high desert lands today, to historic black-and-white shots of their ancestors laden with packs, pulling freight and miners’ ore cars, or accompanying World War II GIs along steep and perilous Italian mountain trails, and even aiding U.S. troops in this century’s Afghanistan anti-terrorist campaigns.
But along with stuffed toy donkeys, postcards, books, and other collectibles and memorabilia for sale, the museum offers a water tower-powered wooden rock miner’s sluice box system, where kids and parents wash through bags of sand to find gemstones and fossils.
“We get a lot of people every day that want to use the sluice box,” Barbara smiles. “It’s one of the funnest things in the world to do. … They just go to town, and it’s become a mainstay attraction for this place.”
Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue
The museum is part of the Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue (PVDR), founded in 2000 and today believed to be the largest non-profit “equine rescue” operation in the world. San Angelo, Texas-based Executive Director Mark Meyers, who also wears the hat of the museum’s chief curator, opened the Mesquite site in November 2022.
“The idea of creating the museum [was] in order to teach people about the many contributions of donkeys in building not just our country but civilization itself,” Meyers says. “Donkeys crossed the Rio Grande [north] in 1558, nine years before Jamestown was settled [and they] built the Spanish Trail, the Catholic Mission System, led the way for the railroads and, of course, the gold rush.”
PVDR also runs three rescue and rehabilitation ranches: one in San Angelo, another in Scenic, Arizona, and a third in Lynchburg, Virginia. Add to that 20 satellite sanctuaries and almost 50 adoption centers nationwide handling some 2,000 donkeys.
“We simply want to share our passion,” Meyers adds. And shared it has been, as the museum has become increasingly popular—a veritable jackpot of a project in this wager-loving town.
”We averaged 200-250 visitors per week in 2023, and when we added the sluice in the latter part of the year, that jumped to about 325,” Meyers boasts.
Now, that’s something to bray about, isn’t it?
Visit the museum website to learn more and plan your visit.
RELATED
##RVT1153
This actually sounds like fun! Maybe a side trip as we head for Quartzsite.
Jamestown was settled in 1607, which would be 50 years after 1558! Perhaps they meant 1598, which was when the first settlers and their burros from Mexico moved north up the Rio Grande into Nuevo Mexico.
Thank you, Bob! 🙂 What an interesting roadside attraction! 🙂 Thank you for describing and highlighting the museum. Safe travels! 🙂