150 years ago, camels appeared on Southwestern desert trails

Winter Visitor Guide 2008
Colorado River Communities & Imperial Valley

Doug Baum of the Texas Camel Corps in a typical summer uniform worn by Lt. Edward F. Beale’s soldiers, if they wore a uniform at all.

If the first sailing ships, the first horses and the appearance of the first Caucasians – Spanish, French, English and Portuguese – flummoxed the natives in the Caribbean and in the Americas – imagine what the sight of a camel 150 years ago must have been like.

Writing in a report to Congress in 1858 of the expedition of camels that he led from Texas to California, across New Mexico and Arizona, Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale observed on Oct. 17, 1857 as his group of men and 25 camels neared the Colorado River:

“Here the Indians began to pour in upon us from the Mohave villages. First, two or three, and then by dozens. They were a fine looking, comfortable, fat and merry set; naked excepting a very small piece of cotton cloth around the waist, and, though barefooted, ran over the sharp rock and pebbles as easily as if shod with iron.

“We were soon surrounded on all sides by them. Some had learned a few words of English from trafficking with the military posts two hundred and fifty miles off, and one of them saluted me with: “God damn my soul eyes. How de do! How de do!”

The concept of using camels as pack animals was promoted by Sen. Jefferson Davis when he became Secretary of War in 1853, the idea implanted in his imagination five years earlier by a Major Henry C. Wayne.

Davis, who later assumed the presidency of the Confederate states, was forward-looking on behalf of the South – he was interested for economic and political reasons in seeing the South connected to the newly-acquired State of California. He favored the Gasdsen Purchase, for example, to expand lands of the Arizona territory for a southern railroad route to California.

That led to a $30,000 congressional appropriation in 1855 to conduct the experiment. Writes Lewis Burt Leslie in “Uncle Sam’s Camels,” about Beale’s introduction to using camels as transport animals:

“While with Kit Carson in an exploration of Death Valley, California, Beale had conceived the ideas thatthe camel, would solve the problem of conquest of waterless wastes in the desert.

“Particularly was Beale influenced by the reading of Abbe Huc’s ‘Travels in China and Tartary,’ which dwelt at some length upon the values of the camel for commerce and travel. Soon we find Lieutenant Beale in Washington, where he met Davis, and together these two enthusiasts looked forward to the arrival in the United States of the first camels.”

In fact 79 camels were purchased from the Middle East and shipped to Indianola, Texas, halfway between Galveston and Corpus Christi, then on to Camp Verde, Texas, near San Antonio.

A word or two about Lt. Beale, who by the time he was 28 years old, had traveled across the country 10 times. Born in 1822 in Washington, D.C., Beale was the their way though hostile lines to San Diego for reinforcements, in time to save Kearney’s troops.

Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale 1822-1893
Beale made six more trips across the country in the next two years, including a trip in 1848 where he carried proof of the discovery of gold in California and was instrumental in starting the Gold Rush of 1849 to the Golden State.

In 1853, Beale was appointed Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California and Nevada, and that year, he made another of his cross country journeys, evaluating a railroad route through southern Colorado and southern Utah. He made his home at Fort Tejon in California, near Bakersfield.

It was in 1857, then, that Beale was simultaneously appointed to survey a wagon route between Fort Defiance, N.M. and the Colorado River, along the 35th parallel, as well as to take command of the first – and last – U.S. Army Camel Corps.

The expedition embarked from Camp Verde at on June 25 of that year, a party of 44 men; 12 wagons; 95 mules, horses and dogs; and 25 of the 70 camels that had been imported.

At first the camels were outperformed by the mules. Wrote Beale at the end of the day:

“Left San Antonio at 1 p.m., and encamped at the beautiful spring at San Lucas, having made sixteen miles, the camels carrying, each, including pack saddles, nearly five hundred and seventy six pounds.

“This being the first day, and the animals not having performed any service for a long time, they seemed tired on their arrival at camp; but I hope, as we proceed, and they harden in the flesh, to find them carrying their burdens more easily.”

The Camel Corps proceeded through the Big Bend Country of Texas, stopping at Fort Stockton, the on to Albuquerque, then to Fort Defiance. Though his contract called for him to begin the survey at Fort Defiance, it actually was the Zuni Pueblo in Zuni, N.M. just across the northeast border of Arizona, that Beale began his assessment. Traveling west across Northern Arizona, much of which would later be Route 66, the expedition used the San Francisco Peaks north of present-day Flagstaff as a guidepost as they headed west.

And the camels began to outperform the mules (see related story), once they became accustomed to the daily grind of the trail, and carrying as much as a half a ton of supplies was a standard load for the good-natured beasts.

The expedition’s journey ended on Oct. 18, at Beale’s Fort Tejon home. With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, interest in camels as a mode of transportation was put on hold until after the war. While Beale as convinced of the animals’ utility, soldiers and cavalrymen were not, for they considered the animals malodorous and difficult to handle – the latter assessment contrasting to the experiences of the 1857 expedition – compared to the behavior of mules.


President Abraham Lincoln pushed for the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, and rail became the preferred method of handling freight and the mails. The camels at Fort Tejon were taken to Los Angeles, where they hauled freight to and from the harbor’s docks. Those back at Camp Verde went to auction and ultimately carried freight or traveled with circuses.

Some camels were used in Western Arizona to carry goods across the desert. There were camels introduced from the Orient that ended up on Northern Nevada. Many camels were simply turned loose, leading to reports that remained unverified as late as 40 years ago that descendants had been spotted in remote areas.

And what of the wagon road survey that Beale conducted, between Zuni and the Colorado River?

Beale wrote to Congress that “… one may travel the road in witner an summer withough suffering the extremes of heat or cold,” providing charts of the summer and winter temperatures along the way, as well as faithful odometer readings.

Where there were canyons, washes for rivers, he suggested either bridges of diversion dams, depending on the situation, to straighten elbows that the party was forced to take from time to time. His estimate of cost: $100,000.

He stated: “As this will inevitably become the great emigrant road to California, as well as that by which all New Mexico will reach this place, it is proper that the government should put in it such a conditjion as to relieve the emigrant and stock drivers of as many hardships incident to their business as possible.

“For this purpose, I would recommend that water dams be constructed at short intervals over the entire road. With these and a few bridges and military posts I do not doubt that the whole emigration to the Pacific coast would pursue this one line, instead of being divided and scattered over half a dozen different routes…”

“I presume that there can be no further question of the practicability of the country near the thirty-fifth parallel for a wagon road,” he stated.

It wouldn’t be until much later that this became U.S. Route 66, and emigrants found many ways to get to the West Coast – by vessel around Cape Horn; the Butterfield Stage and rail through Southern Arizona and over Yuma Crossing and the Ocean to Ocean Bridge; and the Oregon Trail, to name a few.

Mountains of problems for travelers

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HISTORY

It wasn't until well into the 20th century that engineers finally made the journey between Los Angeles and Bakersfield fairly easy and safe.

By Cecilia Rasmussen, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

Whether they've taken the Ridge Route, Highway 99 and Newhall Pass or Interstate 5, for more than 150 years travelers making their way between Los Angeles and Bakersfield through the San Gabriel and Tehachapi mountains have found the route a pain in the neck.

The current 40-mile stretch of the Golden State Freeway, which includes the Grapevine, is plenty steep and winding, but drivers should know that it is a big improvement on its predecessors.

It is the fourth in a series of highways cut through the rugged mountains. Entrepreneurs forged the first route, in 1854, by digging a 60-foot-deep, 240-foot-long gash on the eastern edge of the Santa Susana Mountains called the Newhall Pass, where the current Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways join.

Beale's Cut, as it came to be called, created a narrow, steep passage for horses, stagecoaches and foot traffic, and is credited with spurring the development of Los Angeles.

But the first automobile to cross the mountains, in 1902, had to travel upward in reverse to keep gasoline flowing to the engine -- and the cut's 30% grade was too steep for early cars.

Beale's Cut can still be found between Sierra Highway and the Antelope Valley Freeway, south of Clampitt Road. It was all but abandoned in 1910 when the 435-foot-long Newhall Tunnel was dug about a quarter of a mile west, with an incline of only about 7%.

Still, even the tunnel didn't solve the problem. It was too narrow and traffic jammed up at one end. Meanwhile, after voters in 1910 approved an $18-million state highway bond issue, California's engineers began planning a shorter, more direct route over the mountains, one that would save travelers 58 miles.

The 48-mile Ridge Route opened in 1915 at Castaic Junction, about five miles northwest of the Newhall Pass. It had 697 curves.

The Ridge Route was considered a major feat of highway engineering -- the first modern highway directly linking Los Angeles with the San Joaquin Valley -- and it helped link Northern and Southern California.

Horse-drawn graders had carved out the 20-foot-wide dirt road that zigzagged along the ridge tops so that it resembled a giant grapevine. But the 6.5-mile "Grapevine" segment of the route, from Fort Tejon to the San Joaquin Valley, had already been so named for a different reason by Spanish Lt. Francisco Ruiz, who, after hacking his way through thick patches of Cimarron grapevines in 1806, called the area Cañon de las Uvas, or Grapevine Canyon.

In 1915, the Automobile Club of Southern California called the Ridge Route "the last word in scientific highway building." But four years later, about the time the paving was completed, the club wrote that because of the route's "tortuous" curves, steep grades and sharp drop-offs, it was "potentially one of the most dangerous in the world."

A maximum speed limit of 15 mph was supposed to provide safety. But scores of drivers ignored the limit and their cars tumbled into the canyons below. For those who made the trip safely, the Sandberg Hotel, built by Norwegian-born rancher Harald Sandberg, was a welcome sight near the top.

In 1921, the fancy Lebec Hotel opened in Kern County, about five miles north of the Sandberg, with 300 registered guests. It became a famed hideaway for such celebrities as Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Clara Bow, Buster Keaton and Bugsy Siegel.

Charles Lindbergh landed his plane in a wheat field near the Lebec Hotel in 1929 and spent time there experimenting with flying a glider. His wife, Anne, was quite fond of the hotel's chocolate malts, according to Harrison Scott, author of "Ridge Route: The Road That United California."

The hotel -- and the town that grew up around it -- got its name from a carving in the trunk of a massive oak: "Peter le Beck Killed by a Bear Oct. 17 1837."

Depression-era migrants flocking to California's fields in overloaded jalopies thought of the trip over the mountains as a route to a better life.

In "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck describes the Joad family's brutal trek, one taken by many of those Great Plains refugees known as Okies.

Steinbeck described the moment when the Joads' car crested the top of a mountain road, and they saw the Central Valley:

"Al jammed on the brake and stopped in the middle of the road, and, 'Jesus Christ! Look!' he said. The vineyards, the orchards, the great flat valley, green and beautiful, the trees set in rows, and the farm houses."

He could have been talking about the view from the Ridge Route, or the one from Highway 99, which opened in 1933. Highway 99, or the Ridge Alternate, was significantly shorter and much less curvy, though still steep and treacherous.

It cut the eight-hour Ridge Route drive in half time-wise, but still was the site of many a breakdown and much discomfort.

"In 1954, I drove my 1931 Willys Roadster up the Castaic Grade and on through the more modern Ridge Route [Highway 99], much of which is now covered with Pyramid Lake," retired veterinarian Charles Jenner of Los Alamitos said in a recent e-mail. "That was a tough drive as the Willys kept overheating." It took him two days to get from Los Angeles to Davis, he said.

In 1970, today's eight-lane, 40-mile section of Interstate 5 was completed.

Few people remembered the old roads that had gone before -- at least until Scott came along.

In 1991, the retired Torrance phone company engineer decided to drive the old Ridge Route for the first time since he was a teenager. He soon launched a one-man crusade to get a 17.6-mile stretch through U.S. Forest Service property from Castaic to Gorman onto the National Register of Historic Places. He succeeded in 1997. He also published his own history of the road.

"Only foundations, walls and steps are left from places like the Tumble Inn and Sandberg Inn," Scott said in a recent interview. The Lebec Hotel, he said, burned down in 1971.

Scott and a nonprofit group that he founded, the Ridge Route Preservation Organization, are working to maintain the roadway, which he describes as "poor and decaying." The group holds monthly work parties, helping the Forest Service clean drains full of dirt and debris.

The volunteers have put up nearly a dozen stone monuments paying tribute to area pioneers and colorful sites.

Scott is working to gain federal Scenic Byway status for the Ridge Route. It would be, he said, "just another notch on the gun belt that would allow our organization to build a museum and parking areas along the route."