Letter: Brighty the Burro Was Killed and Eaten by Tourists

Tuscson.com ^ | Ricardo Small

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

1922.

[Libloather]

Tastes kinda like burnt spotted owl.

[No name given]

I couldn’t agree more.

[Veto!]

Eatchicken and alaskan salmon. Would never eat a burro.

[ConservativeMind]

My wife says horse meat is quite tasty, but I haven’t had it yet.

[Veto!]

No horsemeat for me. I occasionally contribute some $$$ to a wild horse sanctuary in CA.

[jacknhoo]

That’s great.

[thecodont]

Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry

[higgmeister]

"Brighty", who lived in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River from about 1892 to 1922.[2]

This article is inane starting with this one hundred year old claim, to condemn National Park Staff for a recent act of God.

[metmom]

“tourists”?????

They misspelled *illegals*.

[metmom]

Could you have posted that this didn’t just happen recently but that was OLD news?

After the recent illegals eating a bald eagle news we heard, this is very believable as a recent incident.

[steve8714]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXn0uIF60iU
Could be worse.

[Palio di Siena]

That you know of….

[rxh4n1]

“All they had was Brighty and some stale tortillas. But necessity being the mother of invention the starving tourists invented the Burrito!”

They’re lucky Alfred Packer wasn’t in their group.

[No name given]

Correct.

[FlingWingFlyer]

According to the informaiton released by the NPS, lightening started the fire on 4 July 2025. The lodge, the cabins and the BRASS statue of “BRIGHTY” burned down on 13 July 2025. Usually it takes about three days to start smoking in the forest. In the old days, we had lookouts in towers watching for smoke. Not they have idiots sitting at computers shopping on Amazon. Something should have been down about that lightning strike long before it was.

[Bookshelf]

It destroyed one of the most scenic venues in Arizona where thousands of honeymooners enjoyed a site far different and far more bucolic than the Canyon’s hectic south rim.

[FlingWingFlyer]

The South Rim has turned into a joke. Another Las Vegas Turned Disneyland. The place has been ruined.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Now that they’ve built motels from Flagstaff and Williams to the South Rim, trying to get into the Canyon is like trying to get into the Super Bowl. The whole north rim has been destroyed by the Dragon Bravo fire. I don’t know what’s going to happen there but you can bet, it won’t ever be what the old North Rim was. They’ll turn it into another Disneyland.

[yesthatjallen]

"If the statue saga has a happy ending, the real-life demise of Brighty does not. In 1922, Brighty was snowed in with two desperados. Trapped in a cabin for three months, the men survived but Brighty didn’t—one night, he was made into burro steaks. When the meat ran out, the men boiled Brighty’s bones for soup."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/who-was-brighty-the-burro-grand-canyon