Camels used to be "loose" in American Southwest, the result of a failed military experiment in their use in the desert in the late 1800s. Feral camels were spotted as late as 1941.
During the early summer of 1856, the Army loaded the camels and they were driven to Camp Verde via Victoria and San Antonio. Reports from initial tests were largely positive. The camels proved to be exceedingly strong, and were able to move quickly across terrain which horses found difficult. Their legendary ability to go without water proved valuable on an 1857 survey mission led by Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale. He rode a camel from Fort Defiance to the Colorado River and his team used 25 camels on the trip. The survey team took the camels into California, where they were stationed at the Benicia Arsenal.
During an 1859 survey of the Trans-Pecos region to find a shorter route to Fort Davis, the Army used the camels again. Under the command of Lt. Edward Hartz and Lt. William Echols, the team surveyed much of the Big Bend area. In 1860, Echols headed another survey team through the Trans-Pecos that employed the Camel Corps. End of the experiment.
With the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Camel Corps was mostly forgotten. Handlers had had difficulty with their camels spooking the horses and mules. Beale offered to keep the Army's camels on his property, but Union Secretary of War Edwin Stanton rejected the offer. Many of the camels were sold to private owners; others escaped into the desert throughout the West and British Columbia. Beale's favorite, the white camel "Seid", fought with another camel during rutting season and was killed by a crushing blow to the head. Seid's bones were sent to the Smithsonian Institution. Feral camels continued to be sighted in the Southwest through the early 1900s, with the last reported sighting in 1941 near Douglas, Texas.
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