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The United States Camel Corps

© Dennis Morehouse

The purpose of an army is to provided storage for those people too hidebound to make it in private life, or so we've always been told. Unfortunately, there are always a few inmates who fail to conform and exhibit initiative, imagination and inventiveness. They see a problem and start looking for a solution without worrying too much about political correctness. One such man in the late 1840s was Army Lieutenant George H. Grossman (or Crossman), and another was Jefferson Davis, destined to become President of the Confederate States.

In the decades before the Civil War, the U.S. Army had started expanding its responsibilities into the western U.S. Some explorers, mountain men and adventure seekers and a few immigrants began entering the western territories in the 1820s and 1830s but the real expansion began when gold was discovered in California in 1848. Gold seekers flooded in during the following year and in the years after that. The Army established forts from the Mississippi River to the west coast to provide protection to the travelers and to maintain control of the lands claimed by the Government.

All of these posts required resupply and communication with their higher headquarters and the Government in Washington. The means in use at the time were adequate for the need, wagons with oxen or mules carried the bulk of supplies and horses carried people and dispatches.

Major Grossman had somewhere gotten an appreciation for camels. Following the Seminole War, when he was still a lieutenant, he began pushing his idea for using camels in the territories of the Southwest. Eventually, his idea came to the attention of Jefferson Davis, who was then a senator from Mississippi and the chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. Even with support at that level, the idea did not catch on quickly. Davis became Secretary of War in 1852, but it wasn't until 1855 that he was finally able to convince Congress to provide funding for the experiment.

Congress initially allotted $30,000 to procure camels; and after the tribulations to be expected when inexperienced people begin working on a new project, Major Henry C. Wayne managed to load 33 camels and their five handlers aboard the U.S.S. Supply, commanded by Lieutenant David Dixon Porter, for the trip to the States.

Ft. Verde, Texas became the home of the Camel Corps. Located 60 miles west of San Antonio, it was right in the middle of the terrain the camels were intended for.