Camels in Dayton

One of the West's strangest experiments passed through here on four legs. In the 1850s the U.S. Army imported camels, betting they could outhaul mules across the southwestern deserts. The animals disliked rocky ground and the test failed, so the government auctioned them off. Some ended up here, packing wood and salt to the Comstock mills for roughly ten years before owners turned them loose to fend for themselves. Few were seen after the 1880s. They were corralled behind the 1861 Leslie Hay Barn, which still stands on Pike Street.

What the plaque says

Camels were imported into the United States for military purposes in the mid-1850's. Lt. Edward Beale of the U.S. Army tested the animals for caravan operations in the deserts of the Southwest. The experiment was not successful and the camels were auctioned off. Some were brought here to haul wood and salt to the mines and mills of the Comstock. They were corralled behind this stone hay barn, known as the Leslie Hay Barn. Used extensively between Sacramento and Nevada points for some ten years, they were later abandoned to fend for themselves. Few were seen after the 1880's.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chollar Mine — 5.4 mi
  A real Comstock silver mine you can still walk into—four hundred feet of original timbered tunnel under C Street, where the work that built a state was done by hand, in the dark
• Virginia City — 5.8 mi
  The boomtown that sits on top of the richest silver strike in America—fewer than a thousand people now, on streets built for twenty-five thousand
• Carson City — 11 mi
  The capital one man platted before there was a territory—where the Comstock's silver became coin at a U.S. Mint and a small sandstone city that has run Nevada ever since
• Stewart Indian School — 12 mi
  The federal boarding school that took Great Basin children from 1890 to 1980 to erase their cultures—its student-built stone campus now a tribally-guided museum telling the story in alumni voices

More markers nearby

• Courthouse Site 1865 – 1909 — steps away
• Dayton School House – 1865 — steps away
• Union Hotel & Post Office — steps away
• Nevada’s First Gold Discovery — steps away