The Burro Room

The one-time office of the Longenbaugh Ice and Coal Company, a pioneer business of Fairplay, still stands on its original site. The inside has been refurbished into the Burro Room, an exhibit dedicated to the burros known as "Rocky Mountain Canaries" for their charming vocal serenades. The burro was sure-footed, patient, loyal, and trusted as a courier of heavy mining equipment.

The Burro Room walls display rare pictures of burro pack trains on trails above Alma. One such photo taken around 1878 shows Lew Hoffman in charge of a pack train ready to leave Alma for the mines. The burros are loaded down with mine buckets, timbers, bellows, and other gear. Other pictures show Ed Snell's "Jack Train," a name used for the burro trains, loaded with gold ore at the North London Mine.