Roy Pray Jr. owned restaurants all over Colorado but was best known as the founder in 1934 of the Golden Burro in Leadville.
Legend has it Pray lost the place in a poker game a few years later to Charlie Frey, but according to the Burro’s current owner, David Wright, Pray called that “bunk.”
Pray said he sold it to Frey for $1,500.
Pray died Sept. 15 at a Cañon City care facility. He was 97.
Pray’s opening of the Burro, which he first called Roy’s Lunch, began a legend that continues today, said Wright, who is also a historical videographer.
The Golden Burro Cafe and Lounge – with its neon gold burro above the door – has been a decades-long gathering place for locals, Wright said.
It is, Wright said, the “longest continually operating restaurant in Lake County.”
Pray “gave a lot of joy to a lot of people,” he said.
Wright has a wall full of pictures of Pray in the Burro.
“He epitomized what the country is about: tenacity, creativity and ingenuity,” Wright said.
When Pray had the Burro, it was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“I threw away the key,” Pray told Wright in a video interview.
In the late 1930s, there were 19 cribs – bordellos – on the same street as the Burro.
There were customers around the clock, Pray said.
Pray renamed it the Golden Burro “because that name just popped into my head,” he said.
Pray “was always willing to take risks,” said his granddaughter, Cheryl Rieger of Evergreen.
In addition to owning restaurants in Cañon City and Springfield, he built the Crystal Lodge and restaurant near Lake City, which he ran for 18 years, his daughter, Carol Mathews of Colorado Springs, said.
Pray once owned a gold mine, Rieger said, “but he never made a dime on that.”
Rieger said that when she was a kid she reported to her grandfather that she was “the only kid on the block without a bike.”
That afternoon a brand new Schwinn was delivered to her house.
Roy Pray was born in Victor on March 1, 1910, and graduated from Cañon City High School.
He married Leona Hoover in 1931. She died in 1984. He later married Faye Emerson. She died in 2005.
After serving in World War II, Pray ran two restaurants in Cañon City: Roy’s Lunch, which his father, Roy Pray Sr., started, and Golden West, as well as Roy’s Lunch in Springfield.
In addition to his daughter and granddaughter, Pray is survived by another grandchild and four great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
