The military's dilemma over how to carry supplies across the arid Southwest desert in the mid-19th century gave rise to the U.S. Camel Corps.
BY RYAN DOUGHERTY
Adorning Inscription Rock at El Morro National Monument in New Mexico are two simple etchings, obscured by the hundreds of others: Beale and Breckinridge. The story behind these inscriptions is little known but remarkable, a bold experiment by the U.S. Army to use camels for its grueling treks through the Southwest desert.
The story began in the mid-19th century. The United States military had a problem: It needed pack animals that could travel across the arid Southwest to carry supplies needed for battles with American Indians. Mules were too ornery, and horses could not bear the intense heat.
Several years earlier, conservationist George Perkins Marsh and Army Lt. George H. Crosman had suggested using camels, which they considered better suited to a desert environment. The idea intrigued Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War (later president of the Confederacy). He pitched it to Congress in 1853.
Congress and the press debated the idea—which some considered crazy—until 1855, when the government gave $30,000 to Army Maj. Henry C. Wayne and charged him with finding camels for the military. Wayne traveled to Europe and Africa and studied captive camels. In Egypt and Turkey, he obtained 33 camels and hired several Arab handlers. The U.S. Camel Corps was born. It sailed back to Texas to begin training.
The corps settled at Camp Verde, where residents showered the animals with attention. One woman sent to President Franklin Pierce a pair of socks knitted, she said, "from the pile of one of our camels." The camels' strong odor and strange appearance, however, frightened other animals. And soldiers soon grumbled about the camels' aggressiveness and tendency to spit up.
Still, observers hailed the camels' speed, endurance, strength, and adaptability. The animals could trek under a hot sun for days with little or no water while carrying 350 pounds, and they ate cactus and other readily available desert plants. Forty-one camels were added to the corps in 1857.
Led by Col. Edward F. Beale, the caravan headed from El Paso, Texas, west to Los Angeles and Fort Tejon, California. It traveled through several areas that are now national park units, including Big Bend National Park, El Malpais National Monument, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, and El Morro. There, Beale and P. Gilmer Breckinridge etched their names onto Inscription Rock, leaving behind a link to the Camel Corps.
"The Camels Are Coming!" proclaimed a newspaper headline when the beasts reached Los Angeles in 1857. "Their approach made quite a stir among the native population, most of whom had never seen the like," one reporter wrote, adding that the camels could "pull a load over a mountain" and "live well where domestic animals would die."
Once the Civil War began, however, Congress mostly forgot about the camels. The experiment came to an abrupt end early on in the war, when Camp Verde fell into Confederate hands. By 1866, most of the camels were sold for about $30 apiece. They sometimes ended up in zoos or circuses. Others wandered off into the desert and were shot by prospectors. Some escaped. As late as the turn of the 20th century, wild camels were reported from Mexico to Arkansas.
Although the last known captive offspring of the camels died in a Los Angeles zoo in 1934, some believe wild descendants of Uncle Sam's Camel Corps still roam in remote parts of Texas, Arizona, and California.
RYAN DOUGHERTY is news editor.
