:’) Related link.
CAMELS. In 1836 Maj. George H. Crosman urged the United States War Department to use camels in Indian campaigns in Florida because of the animals’ ability to keep on the move with a minimum of food and water.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/quc01
The Army brought camels all the way to CA because they could move through the desert. It didn’t work out too well, however, and they eventually died out.
re: “CAMELS. In 1836 Maj. George H. Crosman urged the United States War Department to use camels in Indian campaigns in Florida because of the animals’ ability to keep on the move with a minimum of food and water.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/quc01";
The same thought crossed my mind, the experimental use by the Army of camels in the Southwest. There are even still camel races in Virginia City, Nevada that go back to that time period. I wondered if these oil guys had inadvertently run across the bones of one those camels.