Which one? There are several. Bygone days of the railroad.
Posted on 08/09/2015 9:18:49 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Initially seen as the Army's answer to how to settle the frontier, the camels eventually became a literal beast of burden, with no home on the range.
In the 1880s, a wild menace haunted the Arizona territory. It was known as the Red Ghost, and its legend grew as it roamed the high country. It trampled a woman to death in 1883. It was rumored to stand 30 feet tall. A cowboy once tried to rope the Ghost, but it turned and charged his mount, nearly killing them both. One man chased it, then claimed it disappeared right before his eyes. Another swore it devoured a grizzly bear.
"The eyewitnesses said it was a devilish looking creature strapped on the back of some strange-looking beast," Marshall Trimble, Arizona's official state historian, tells me.
Months after the first attacks, a group of miners spotted the Ghost along the Verde River. As Trimble explained in Arizoniana, his book about folk tales of the Old West, they took aim at the creature. When it fled their gunfire, something shook loose and landed on the ground. The miners approached the spot where it fell. They saw a human skull lying in the dirt, bits of skin and hair still stuck to bone.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
Which one? There are several. Bygone days of the railroad.
It’s not far north of Campe Verde. The sign says “private property” But on down the road there’s a small park.
I wonder why they weren’t cut up for scrap long ago. And glad they weren’t.
I have a niece who lives out in the country near Fredricksburg. I want to visit her and eat at that restaurant on the way. I have to wait till it is cooler. I am not leaving my air conditioned house for a while! ; )
Practically speaking, there were never that many camels, and it quickly turned out that horses, donkeys and mules do not like camels.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/states/arizona/2011-02-15-1042942857_x.htm
On the plus side, there are many wild burros, the smaller Mexican version of the donkey, that prosper in the western Arizona town of Oatman, and are popular tourist attractions. Quite friendly, they are always on the lookout for handouts from people.
The camels were brought in by the US Secretary of War to see how they would do in the Great American Desert. Everyone hated them even though they did well and thrived.
The camel corps was disbanded and the camels released because no one wanted THAT Secretary of War to be remembered.
His name was Jefferson Davis, later President of the Confederate States of America.
Now, I believe all camels and camel signs should be removed as I’m OFFENDED by the association with the South! ;-)
The Last Camel Charge: The Untold Story of America's Desert Military Experiment[Amazon]
They were featured in an episode of “Have Gun will Travel” and in Erle Stanley Gardner’s Lost Mystery: “The case of the Missing Mojave Camel.”
Garden Villas bloomed as pastoral suburb in urban Houston
The history of the property can be traced back to 1833 when Henry B. Prentiss, a colonist from Massachusetts, received his land grant from Stephen F. Austin. His prairie land covered almost 3,200 acres near Sims Bayou. Prentiss never used the land and it passed through several owners over the next 50 years, having once been sold for $2.75 in delinquent taxes. Not until Samuel Ezekial Allen purchased it in 1882 was the land developed by its owner. (For the record, Allen paid $4,000 for the acreage.)
Allen had inherited his father’s cattle ranch, which he expanded to 13,000 acres. Allen’s operation was so vast that he had his own boat landing and railway loading pens.
The Allens also had orchards and vegetable gardens, features that would be promoted in the 20th century development of the property. An Allen descendant has confirmed that in the 1850s camels grazed on this land, as well as that of Francis R. Lubbock, whose ranch was just east of Allen’s ranch. This was an experiment of the United States Army where North African camels were used to carry mail and small equipment through regions of Texas. Although the plan failed because the animals were difficult to handle, the sight of camels meandering on the outskirts of Houston caused quite a stir when seen by travelers.
Germans are the largest population of Europeans to migrate to the US.
I’ve never visited that liberal site of great knowledge where any moron on the planet can edit the text.
Saw the movie “Tracks” recently. Learned that there are over 50,000 feral camels in Australia, the descendants of those brought by settlers in the 1830s.
I love Indianola.
It’s still possible to see the foundation from the old courthouse - 200 feet offshore in Matagorda Bay.
The back bay has odd foundations too.
My 4 yr old fished for the first time there a few months ago.
That camel was obviously a racist.
/sarc
This is interesting and timely for me.
Someone styled as ‘Conuly’ posted a response to the original Smithsonian article, writing, “At one point there WERE wild camels roaming the west. However, they went extinct more or less around the same time as the mammoths and most megafauna outside of Africa.”
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that someone was moving into my community, using one of those U-Haul trucks with the ‘Supergraphics’ of animals and blurbs of information on them.
I did a double-take: this one had a Camel pictured, and declared that there WERE camels in North America, in the long past.
I looked it up, and found that indeed an ancient type of camel once lived in the West of the North American Continent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelops
-JT
Interesting that Jefferson Davis believed camels could be used for supply lines in the 1850s. He must have been aware that camels once lived there.
I don’t think he could have known that; but he certainly could have reasoned that the camels of his day could thrive there...
-JT
I loved this book as a kid.
I saw one once. It was running with a pack of jackalope.
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