The Great American Camel Experiment
Long before highways and railroads, the U.S. Army bet on camels to tame the Wild West.
In the mid-1800s, as the United States expanded westward, the vast arid deserts of the Southwest posed a serious challenge to transportation and military logistics. Horses and mules struggled in the punishing heat and endless stretches without water. In a surprising twist largely forgotten by history, the U.S. Army decided to solve this problem by importing camels and sent them to traverse the American wilderness.
The idea first took root in 1836, but it wasn’t until Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederacy, became Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce in 1853 that the “camel experiment” gained real momentum. Davis, seeking novel solutions for troop movements and supply trains, pushed Congress to approve funds for the project. In 1855, Congress allocated $30,000—real money at the time—for the importation of camels.
Major Henry C. Wayne, an enthusiastic supporter, was dispatched alongside naval officer David Dixon Porter to the Mediterranean and North Africa. They acquired 33 camels—some dromedaries, some Bactrians—along with a handful of expert camel drivers from Egypt, Turkey, and Tunisia. The U.S. Camel Corps landed at Indianola, Texas, in May 1856, capturing the imagination and amusement of all who saw the strange beasts.
The camels immediately proved their worth in desert conditions. Able to travel days without water, carry heavy loads, and subsist on scrubby desert plants, they outperformed the Army’s mules and horses. Expeditions across Texas, Arizona, and California encountered success. Reports from Camel Corps officers praised the animals’ endurance and even-temperedness. In one trek between Camp Verde, Texas, and Los Angeles, the camels crossed hundreds of miles of desert faster and in better condition than any pack train.
Yet, not all was smooth. Soldiers unfamiliar with camels found them intimidating and temperamental; many didn’t like their smell or their tendency to spit. Army mules and horses, on which soldiers relied, were often spooked at the very sight or scent of camels, causing chaos in mixed herds. Training and acclimating both animals and people to work together proved challenging.
Despite these setbacks, the Army imported a second shipment, raising the herd to just over 70 animals. There were ambitious plans—establishing regular camel caravans between outposts, using them for mail delivery, and even considering camel-mounted cavalry.
Then came the Civil War. With the outbreak of conflict in 1861, priorities shifted. Camp Verde and its camels fell into Confederate hands. Records indicate some camels were used for transport, but most were left to wander or sold at auction. After the war, what remained of the Camel Corps was disbanded. A few camels ended up in circuses or were simply turned loose in the wild.
For decades, there were sightings of lone camels roaming the Southwest, woven into cowboy legends as the “Red Ghost” or strange omens in the desert. A handful survived well into the 20th century, a ghostly legacy of America’s forgotten Camel Corps.
Today, just a small plaque at the old Camp Verde site and scant museum displays remember what was once one of the strangest—and, for a moment, promising—innovations in American frontier history. The Great American Camel Experiment stands as a quirky but telling chapter in U.S. history that not one in ten Americans have ever heard.
###END###
