By Kathy Krause

It was the summer of 1857 and two shipments of camels had arrived in Texas from the Middle East bringing the total number to about 75. Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale was in charge of the Camel Corps and was assigned to survey a route from Fort Defiance, NM (now Arizona) to the Colorado River with plans to build a wagon road and scout out a route for a southern transcontinental railroad.

Beale left Camp Verde, TX in June with 25 camels, 44 soldiers, numerous horses and mules and two of the Greek camel drovers, Hadji Ali and Yiorgos Caralambo. The soldiers nicknamed Hadji "Hi Jolly" and Yiorgos became "Greek George." Hi Jolly was the chief camel driver. The camels were loaded with 600-800 lbs of supplies (3-4 times that capable of a mule). At first, the mules and horses outdid the camels but soon the camels left them "in the dust." There were some exciting times with the horses and mules due to their fear of the strange looking camels: their bellows and roars, not to mention their smell, would send the other animals scurrying in a panic. The expedition crossed the territory at roughly the same location as the current Route 66, I-40 and the old Santa Fe RR. After reaching the Colorado River as planned, they crossed into California before returning to Texas where Beale proclaimed it a rousing success. He had a high regard for the camels, giving them credit for the success of the journey. One thing he failed to report was the fact that the camels didn’t take well to the rocky soil of the Southwest. Beale made two more trips over the next two years and the wagon road he built along the 35th parallel, with the aid of the camels, became a popular immigrant trail known as the Beale Wagon Road. The southern transcontinental railroad was built along this route in the early 1880s.

John Butterfield, who had won a government contract for a southern mail and passenger route from St. Louis to San Francisco, procured camels from Beale in the fall of 1857 to build portions of his road through Texas, Tucson, Fort Yuma and Los Angeles which became known as the Butterfield Overland Stage Route. Consequently, camels were in all of the territory of the Southwest by 1858.

In 1858, the new Secretary of War, John Floyd, told Congress that the camels had proved themselves and he urged them to order 1000 more! Congress didn’t act on the request because of the trouble brewing between the North and South and war seemed imminent. They had more to worry about than camels! With the first shots of the Civil War, the Camel Military Corps was as good as dead. The Union Army was not interested in continuing the corps because it was first proposed by Jefferson Davis, now the Confederate President. The soldiers in the west were called back east to fight, forts were abandoned and most of the camels were auctioned off. Mining companies purchased some to transport ore, freight companies used them to haul supplies, some were purchased by circuses and zoos and Beale, himself, kept a few for his ranch in California. Some ended up as beasts of burden as far north as British Columbia, Canada. A few escaped or were released into the desert wilderness where most were shot by prospectors and hunters as pests.

Hi Jolly kept a few of the camels and started a freight business between the Colorado River and mining camps in southern Arizona. His business soon failed and he released the last camel into the desert near Gila Bend. The Army hired him in 1880 as a scout and that same year he married Gertrude Serna of Tucson. By this time, he had become an American citizen and was using his birth name: Philip Tedro. He later settled in Quartzsite, AZ, and became a miner until his death in 1902 at the age of 73. Folklore has it that he died near Quartzsite while searching for his camels. That they found him along the road with his arm over a dead camel is one of man’s enduring legends. He believed to his dying day that a few of the camels still roamed the desert. Today, in the Quartzsite cemetery there stands a large, pyramid-shaped monument to Hi Jolly and the Army Camel Corps.

For years there were many sightings of the camels in the deserts of the Southwest, including our own Verde Valley. They have been responsible for causing stampedes of cattle, frightening train passengers (one was even killed by a train in the 1890s), creating havoc with miners’ mules and even gave rise to runaway stage coaches when they suddenly appeared out of the desert.

Historians disagree on when the last camel was sited: from 1901 with reports of a sighting as late as 1956. In April 1934, the Oakland (CA) Tribune reported: "Topsy, the last American camel that trekked across the desert of Arizona and California, died today at Griffith Park" (L.A. Zoo). A phantom camel, "Red Ghost," appeared in Southwest folklore and was said to have been sighted several times with a headless corpse strapped to its saddle!

Failure of the camel experiment in the Southwest was due more to attitudes toward the animals rather than to any shortcomings of the camels. Think about all this when you see the camel at a zoo. Or, perchance, you may come upon one out in Arizona’s desert.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(courtesy) Reuse only by permission.

Camel drover, Hi Jolly (c.1896) and Lt. Edward Beale both loved and respected the camels in their charge. Both men kept several of the animals when the Camel Corps was discontinued in 1861.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Wikipedia) Reuse only bypermission.

The monument to Hi Jolly and the Army Camel Corps in the Quartzsite Cemetery.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Harpers Weekly Magazine) Reuse only by permission.

Camels in the southwestern United States, late-1850s.