Camel Caravans
The United States Congress in 1855 approved a plan to use camels to carry goods across the deserts of the southwest to California.
The plan was the bright idea of Jefferson Davis, an imaginative young senator from Mississippi at the time. Davis was convinced that camels--famous for their sure-footedness in shifting sands and their ability to endure intense heat--would be an ideal means of transporting military supplies to California. After Davis became United States Secretary of War, he dispatched government agents to north Africa to purchase a small herd of camels. The camels eventually arrived in New Mexico where they were assigned the task of transporting goods over a twelve-hundred-mile desert trail to southern California.
On their maiden trek west, the camels averaged twenty-five miles a day and finished the journey in about fifty days. The caravan arrived safely in southern California without losing a single man or beast. Some of the soldiers who served as camel tenders complained that the rolling gait of their ungainly mounts made them seasick. Others said that the camels had extremely rude manners. When angry or upset, the discomfited dromedaries had the unpleasant habit of ejecting their cuds into the face of unsuspecting onlookers!
Although the camels did well, the government soon lost interest. In the early 1860s, some thirty-five decommissioned camels were driven north from Los Angeles to the army's Benicia Arsenal in Solano County. There they were auctioned off as government surplus to the highest bidder.
In the years before the advent of the railroad, the major arteries of inland trade and transportation in California were the routes of the great paddlewheel steamers on San Francisco Bay and on the larger rivers of the Central Valley.
The magnificent river boats that plied the waters of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers were every bit as elegant as any that ever paddled their way along the mighty Mississippi. They were dripping with Victorian gingerbread, and their staterooms were decked out with lace and cut velvet. One New Englander was delighted with the luxury and comfort he found aboard The Senator in 1850: "It was a strong, spacious, and elegant boat. After my recent barbaric life, her long upper saloon, with its sofas and faded carpet, seemed splendid enough for a palace."
Huge profits were to be made, and the competition for customers between San Francisco and Sacramento was particularly intense. Rival crews got into fist fights over who would carry a particular passenger or load of freight, while captains pushed their boats to the limit, trying to make the best time. The record from San Francisco was set in 1861: five hours and nineteen minutes. Price wars drove passenger fares down from $30 to $5. One desperate captain even offered to carry folks for free--just to get their business!
The overland mail reached California by stagecoach in about three weeks. The fleet-footed ponies of the Pony Express reduced delivery time to around ten days. But a new technology, the telegraph, promised instant communication across the continent.
The telegraph is a simple device that sends messages by electricity. It was developed by an American inventor named Samuel F. B. Morse. He also developed the Morse code, an ingenious code that uses dots and dashes to stand for the letters of the alphabet. Morse sent his first message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1844. Telegraph lines soon connected cities throughout the eastern United States.
Workers began building a telegraph line across the country in the summer of 1861. It was completed on October 24, 1861. On that historic day, the first telegram was sent from California to the east. The chief justice of the California Supreme Court telegraphed President Abraham Lincoln to declare California's loyalty to the union. Also on that day the Pony Express went out of business. The telegraph had rendered its services obsolete.