Beale On Seid Leads The Way

 February 5, 2026

   You might say I've got Beale on the brain. I am still pursuing the idea that Ned was the Father of the Mother Road. How do you take the image of an Old West guy and give it a design element that pays off everything he begat?

Daily Whip Out:

"Beale Begat A Neon Highway"

   Not a bad idea. Needs work. I may flip him horizontally, looking to the right. Need to tweak those car lights a bit. Meanwhile, we know that Beale rode a white camel.

Daily Whip Out:

"Beale On Seid Leads The Way"

   After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Camel Corps was totally scrapped. It didn't help that the project was the brainchild of Jefferson Davis, who was the Secretary of War, but when the war broke out and he became the president of the Confederacy, anything he had anything to do with was suddenly tainted. Ed Beale even offered to keep the camels on his property but the Union Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, rejected the offer. Many of the camels were sold to private owners. Others were taken across the border and sold to Mexican circuses. Even others escaped into the desert and roamed, like wild burros. Beale's favorite white camel "Seid" got into a fight with another male camel during rutting season and was killed by a blow to the head. His bones were sent to the Smithsonian. Reportedly, the last reported sighting of one of Beale's camels was near Douglas, Texas in 1941.

“A camel’s back is broken by the last straw, but it bears many before.”

—Old Vaquero Saying