A person would expect to find a camel in the deserts of the Middle East or Asia Minor.

But passing through Flagstaff and northern Arizona in the 1850s?

It's true. And the Pioneer Museum and the Museum of Northern Arizona are featuring exhibits, events lectures and more commemorating the U.S. government's experiment using camels to open a route through the wilderness West.

The camels were part of a Beale Wagon Road survey party of 50 men, 100 mules, 10 wagons and more than 300 sheep during the 1857 expedition that roughed out a road from Fort Defiance in the New Mexico Territory to the Colorado River. It passed right through Flagstaff, and was led by Edward F. Beale, a retired naval lieutenant.

Bringing the exhibit home are items in the Pioneer Museum display like a U.S. regulation camel bell, circa mid-1850s, bronze and emblazoned with patriotic eagles and stars. The bell may last have rung while tied around the neck of one of 22 sturdy Arvana camels that carried tools and other supplies on the survey.

THE CAMEL EXPERIMENT

The idea for using camels on the expedition originated in 1853 with Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. On the recommendation of Davis, the government decided to experiment with camels as a possible replacement for horses, thinking they might fair better in the climate and terrain of the West.

Congress set aside $30,000 for the purchase of animals.

The camels took some getting used to. Their strong smell and noisy groans unnerved many people. They panicked and stampeded horses and mules.

"The drivers and the crews weren't used to camels and didn't like them," said Leslie Roe, the new director of the Pioneer Museum. "They didn't care if they were better. It's a form of animal prejudice."

Beale, however, found the beasts excellent for the job at hand.

"Certainly there was never anything so patient and enduring and so little troublesome than this noble animal," he said, in his 1858 report on the survey to Secretary of War John B. Floyd, who chose Beale to led the expedition.

The camels were used most extensively on the Arizona portions of the 35th parallel route, where they were able to travel across rocky volcanic areas and sand.

After the expedition, many of the camels were released in western Arizona deserts, where they would show up over the next 40 years, scaring travelers and other pack animals.

A WAY WEST

Beale succeeded in carving out the most direct route across the heart of the country. His packtrain followed in the footsteps of the route mapped out by Army Lt. Amiel Whipple in 1853 to 1854, one of four exploratory routes charted to find a path for the first transcontinental railroad.

Construction and improvements of the Beale Wagon Road in 1858 through 1859, supervised by Beale, cost Congress about $150,000, according to "Along the 35th Parallel," Jack Beale Smith, Plateau Journal, MNA, 2001.

"It was the first federally funded major road west," said Joe Meehan, curator at the Pioneer Museum. "It was very significant at one point. Between 1859 and 1882, when the railroad came, it probably had as many people headed west as the Oregon Trail. It continued in use as a stagecoach road, and forked off to Prescott and other places, into the early 1900s."

The Beale Wagon Road was used by the Boston Party in 1876, when it came through this area and brought the first homesteaders to Flagstaff, Meehan said.

SECTIONS OF ROAD REMAIN

The historic road is largely hidden today, but its existence and history are kept alive by local historians like Meehan and Jerry Snow, who has pursued the Beale story for five years.

"They needed a faster route to California, so that's why they decided to build a wagon road along the 35th parallel," said Snow, a MNA docent and freelance tour guide.

Snow takes his tour participants in search of remnants of the road between Leupp and Seligman, where 10-foot wide areas were cleared for wagon travel and native rocks stacked along the sides of the roadbed.

"One of the most popular places people camped on Beale Wagon Road was Leroux Springs, off Snowbowl Road," Snow said. "It was the highest place on the route. It had a nice meadow to graze your animals and get nice cold water."

Today, modern drivers may travel over large sections of the road and not know it is under their tires.

A small 1979 book by Eldon G. Bowman and Jack Smith, "Beale's Road through Arizona," details the course of the road through Flagstaff, including under Santa Fe rail tracks, old Route 66 and Interstate 40.

The road even lies beneath parts of residential East Flagstaff and the playground of Puente de Hozho school. It climbs across McMillan Mesa and threads its way through backyards and alleys to the Museum of Northern Arizona, then north under Highway 180 to the Fort Valley area.

REMEMBERING THE ROAD

In quiet sections of the Kaibab National Forest, forest service roads stripe the landscape through pine forests and among junipers, still serving the purpose Beale intended, as serviceable highways.

Signposts with carved camel images were installed along sections of the road in the 1980s, but many were stolen.

Also during the '80s, metal signs announcing the route of the road were put up in Flagstaff by local history buff Jack Smith, who has since moved to Oklahoma. These were also stolen.

"The Beale story is under-appreciated in Flagstaff; Route 66 gets all the attention," Roe said. "Flagstaff has been the crossroads since human habitation here.

"The Beale road is the first of that legacy of the territorial years when people came through here. Flagstaff is a cosmopolitan city, and a lot of it has to do with the route through here."

A monument honoring Beale, complete with a line of iron camels walking on top, still stands in Kingman.

Reporter Betsey Bruner can be reached at 556-2255 or by e-mail at bbruner@azdailysun.com.