Camels in Montana

For a brief period in the 1860s, camels imported from North Africa were used as pack animals in the gold camps of western Montana.

The camels proved useful, according to Ellen Baumler, an author and interpretive historian at the Montana Historical Society, but they fell out of favor for one simple reason.

“Camels and mules do not get along,” she said. “Mules will smell camels on the wind and bolt every time.”

Baumler will relate the little-known history of the Montana camels during the 2015 Mullan Road Conference in Fort Benton, set for May 22-24. Other speakers will talk about Fort Whoop-Up, the Blackfeet Nation in 1860, the survival of heirloom grains from the fur-trade era and more.

The annual conference explores — in presentations and field trips — the Mullan Military Wagon Road, a 644-mile trail from Fort Benton, the head of navigation on the Missouri River, to Fort Walla Walla, on the Columbia River in Washington. The road was built by an expedition of 230 soldiers and civilians under the leadership of U.S. Army 1st Lt. John Mullan in 1859-60.

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The conference, held at various points along the trail each year, also deals more generally with the Upper Missouri and the Northwest during the 1850s.

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