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 ...
As the last Camel was being BBQ’D, someone was overheard saying, “Dang, It does taste like Chicken”. Anyone bring any Rudy’s Sauce?
Very interesting story all the same.
Interesting bit is that there existed a “mule lobby”.
Some things never change.
Very interesting but makes no mention of Hi Jolly. Once visited his grave in Quartzsite, Arizona.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hi_Jolly
We were lucky...at one time there were some one million wild camels in Australia, and the population was projected to double every decade. In 2009, the gov’t started to cull the heard ( where the heck was PETA?) and now it’s down to about 300,000.
They disappeared on a “Death Valley Days” episode back when I was a kid. I remember watching it. :>)
The liberal historical depository is currently experiencing site difficulties ...
Fascinating. Thanks for the link.
If you close the site and click on it a 2nd time, it will usually come up. Their links have been this way all morning.
Camp Verde Texas is about 15 miles from my house. There’s a great restaurant there now.
http://texas-hill-country.com/issue/2015/article/camels-of-camp-verde
They've been biding their time, arming up:
DVDays missed a golden opportunity to get a tobacco sponsor on that one. ;’)
I live in New Braunfels, a Texas town of intense German heritage. The German immigrants landed at Indianola on Matagorda Bay and made their way inland.
The Army landed their camels at Indianola, also. Indianola once had a population of 5,000 but is now a ghost town (actually just a historical marker), having been destroyed by two hurricanes in the 1800s.
Just went down to Camp Verde, Texas a few weeks ago. Nothing there but a monument and a great restaurant, which was our real reason for going.
Jefferson Davis, while Secretary of War, had the camels brought over from the Middle East along with handlers. The story is the Camels were more or less abandoned when the Civil War broke out and the camp was closed. I wonder if the ones in AZ wondered over to the more desert like conditions. (I didn’t read the article. Yet.)
They never mention Jefferson Davis, huh.
You live in a beautiful part of Texas.
What’s the story on that rail road bridge out in the middle of nowhere?
If you have ever been around camels they are not nice fun animals. Lets see bite, spite and smell like sh$t, all around just a big wonderful friend of the waste lands.
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