In 1863, when the Civil War was raging in the United States, Emperor Maximilian, backed by the French army, had taken Mexico City. Things looked bleak for the Republican army of Benito Juarez. Holed up near the border, with a ragtag group of guerrillas, he knew he had to obtain modern artillery from the north to defeat the invaders. The ports were blockaded and the land route across the Chihuahuan Desert was perilous; pack horses or mules would die on the journey of dehydration.

One of Juarez’s officers, Col. Jesus Carranza came up with a unique idea. His family had a ranch that purchased camels from the U.S. government. Juarez had heard about these animals and knew of their prodigious capacity for transporting heavy loads in the deserts of Egypt and Tunisia with little or no water. After establishing headquarters at Paseo del Norte, he sent word to his emissary, Matias Romero, to obtain advanced weapons from the United States that could be used to aid his armies to the south and east. Camels provided the ideal solution, and his young colonel would have them furnished with saddles and pack frames, and train soldiers to load and ride them. Thus, the Mexican army gained a critical and timely advantage over the French.

How the camels ended up in Mexico was due in no small part to the obstinacy of the U.S. Army, and a brainchild of the future Confederate president. Camels were first thought of as pack animals in the United States as early as the mid-1830s because of their resistance to drought and heat, and their capacity to bear heavy loads. It was not until a creative and ambitious secretary of war by the name of Jefferson Davis held office that anyone took the idea seriously. Davis managed to convince Congress to obtain two shipments of camels, both Bactrian and Dromedary, from Egypt and Tunisia. By 1855, the U.S. Army Camel Corps consisted of 70 camels and would gradually grow to over a hundred. While the army high command was skeptical and preferred the tried and true army mule as a beast of burden, several younger officers who worked in the desert areas knew how valuable the camels were. One such officer, Robert E. Lee, who was commander of the Department of Texas in 1857, wrote favorably of the camels that, he said, could go a full day carrying supplies across the desert not needing a drop of water until they reached camp at sundown.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, no one wanted to adopt an idea promulgated by Jefferson Davis, a Confederate president, nor one promoted by Lee, a rebel officer. In addition, the army mules were “more American” and more in keeping with tradition. So, the camels were sold off to various parties, including the Carranzas, who had a ranch in the State of Coahuila. They then provided the animals to Juarez and his forces in Chihuahua. Now, with the camels also transporting casks of water shipped from Chihuahua to remote locations where they could be accessed by troops, the Republicans had a distinct advantage. The Mexicans began to fight much smarter with the natural advantages of the desert terrain and control of the water sources from late October through mid-June of 1864. With improved artillery from the north, good leadership and determination, Juarez’s troops were able to turn the tide of the war, defeat the French, execute Maximilian and restore the Republic.

And the camels? A few were kept as pack animals for the army, the rest sold off to private circuses. As late as the 1950s a few stragglers from the original group remained, still entertaining visitors at small roadside circuses, veterans of a war that defeated the armies of Napoleon III and helped create the modern Mexican Republic.