Beale's Camels Swam The Colorado River And One of Them Enjoyed It So Much He Swam Upstream Against The Current

 

January 24, 2026

   Thanks to Paul Andrew Hutton we have finally solved the Beale Camel Corp mystery with a couple of key passages from this classic book.

One nitpick: there are no saguaros

along the route Beale took

   One hundred and sixty-seven-years ago yesterday, Lt. Ed Beale and his Camel Corp were met at the Colorado River by Capt. Johnson and his General Jesup side-wheeler steamboat to help with the transport of the men and gear across the wide river. But this was NOT on the original trip. Lt. Ed Beale and his Camel Corp were eastbound on his RETURN from Fort Tejon north of Los Angeles and the commander was relieved to have the assistance of a boat to convey his men and equipment across the mighty Colorado. 

   This solves the mystery of the original crossing when the Beale Expedition was westbound and reached the Colorado River on October 19, 1857. I grew up hearing the story that the General Jesup (also styled as Jessup) met Beale and ferried everyone across, but that is not correct. It was on the return trip. It appears from journal entries that the camels, horses and mules swam the river both coming and going.

   A journal entry from May Humphreys Stacey says one of the camels enjoyed swimming so much he swam upstream against the current!  On the original, westbound crossing, the expedition had a rubber boat with them and they carried all their supplies and one assumes the wagons—perhaps disassembled—across in that fashion. However, they lost 10 mules and two horses to the swift current. In a grisly side note, the Mojave Indians assembled on the shore watching the event went downstream and pulled the carcasses ashore and subsequently ate them. All this information comes from Uncle Sam's Camels: The Journal of May Humphreys Stacey Supplemented by the Report of Edward Fitzgerald Beale (1857-1858) by Lewis Lesley

   My  great friend Paul Andrew Hutton called me and read me the passages from his copy of the book. Paul wrote the forward for the second edition so he had the inside skinny on this and for that and many other things, all of us who love history thank him!

"One of the joys of seeking historical scholarship is having friends who know more than you do."

—BBB