Victor was once so big the town scored a New York Times headline in 1899.

Unfortunately, it was to report bad news: “Fire in a Colorado Town: Business Section of Victor, Near Cripple Creek, Destroyed — The Loss Estimated at $2,000,000.”

As it turns out, it’s not wise to wash your dress with a flammable liquid while smoking. That’s how a woman in a Victor brothel accidentally set fire to the booming mining town, after a hot August wind carried the flames from her dress through the wooden buildings of downtown, scorching whole blocks and hundreds of structures.

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But the good people of Victor were indomitable. The 8,000 underground gold miners, their families and those who served them in saloons, grocery and hardware stores and other businesses refused to submit to the devastation. They turned around and rebuilt their downtown with brick less than six months after the fire. Some of those historic buildings stand today.

“There’s nothing here newer than 1902 or 1903,” said Victor resident Chris Bilardi.

To celebrate its mining heritage and the city’s 1894 incorporation, the town, which came to be known as the City of Mines, founded an annual celebration in 1895, first known as World Celebration. Through the decades the free event changed and grew into Gold Rush Days, and features mining games, pack burro races, kids zone, a parade, pancake breakfast, live music, vintage baseball game and more.

“Tradition and history,” said Bilardi, chairperson of the Gold Rush Days committee. “That pretty much defines Victor.”

The town was platted in 1893, after prospectors found large pockets of gold in 1890-1891, which lured miners from across the country to work in more than 500 mines, including the Ajax, Strong and Independence mines.

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From Friday through Sunday, people can get a small taste of that old mining life by watching or participating in mining competitions, including hand mucking, drilling and team jackleg drilling, using traditional tools and techniques.

During Sunday’s pack burro race, visitors can watch competitors from around the U.S. and British Columbia race 50 to 60 burros over a 7 1/2-mile trail that begins and ends in Victor.

“People can see the start and finish,” Bilardi said. “The start will send chills up your spine to see all those burros darting up Main Street between the vendors. They go up by Rita, our troll, and finish on Victor’s Main Street. The fastest ones can do it in an hour and 20 minutes. The last ones come in just shy of three hours.”

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And the vintage league baseball game is intended to make you contemplate all the differences between yesteryear and now.

“They don’t use baseball gloves. It’s old timey,” Bilardi said. “The whole thrust this year is to tie us back to the days when Victor was founded and gold mining was ruling the roost. The nature of our town is we are a throwback in time. We do all we can to preserve that flavor here.”