The bizarre yet true story of how the US Army tried to conquer the American West with camels

[Nevilledog]

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-camel-corps/

In 1836, an Army lieutenant had a… unique idea.

The U.S. was in the midst of its expansion west, which was proving to be a difficult and oftentimes dangerous trek for pioneers who were attempting to make their way across harsh terrain. Enter Army Lt. George H. Crossman, who proposed a simple solution: Camels.

The idea of buying and importing camels to the American Southwest for “military purposes” would later be considered “the most unique experiment in U.S. Army history,” according to the National Museum of the U.S. Army. Unofficially called the “U.S. Army Camel Corps,” the experiment saw a series of successes before it was effectively ended with the beginning of the Civil War.

Some might say it was the first of many of the Army’s failed modernization attempts, but I digress.

However, Crossman’s bizarre idea didn’t actually come to fruition until almost two decades after he first proposed it. After Crossman came up with the idea in 1836, he put together a study on the advantages of using camels and sent a report to the War Department in Washington, D.C., proposing that they invest in camels because they were “unrivaled among animals” in their ability to endure labor, navigate difficult terrain, and go without water or much food “for six or eight days, or it is said even longer.”

*snip*

[soothsayer]

1. I guess the Romans ruined it for elephants

Cool

[Thomas Hurt]

2. and Hollywood made a comedy movie about in 1976...

as they say loosely based on historical facts.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074614/

[soothsayer]

3. Interesting but too many sad outcomes for the beasties

[Tanuki]

4. When I was kid I saw a re-run of a Death Valley Days episode about this.

Some settlers were being terrorized by a horrific "headless horseman"-type specter. Long story short, it turned out that a soldier riding one of those camels had died in the saddle, and the poor camel was still wandering around loose in the desert with what was now the soldier's clothed skeleton still firmly attached in place.
😱 💀 🐪

[niyad]

5. I well remember the camel races in Virginia City.

[Ex Lurker]

6. Haj Ali, (anglicized to Hi Jolly) a Syrian camel driver, was brought along

to teach them how to ride and wrangle the camels. He was one of the first Arab immigrants to the United States



The New Christy Minstrels did a song about him https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hi+jolly+song&t=newext&atb=v256-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOZ5pKav9vCU