Why did Nevada ban camels from public roads? It goes back to a short-lived 19th century experiment.

In 1875, when Nevada was still in its infancy as a state, the seventh session of the Legislature created a fund to pay legislators, prohibited people who hadn’t received a medical education from practicing medicine and banned camels from public roads.

Entitled “An Act to prohibit camels and dromedaries from running at large on or about the public highways of the State of Nevada,” the latter law made it a misdemeanor to knowingly let the animals loose on public roads with penalties of $25 to $100 and 25 to 100 days imprisonment for violators.

The law stemmed from a short-lived 19th century experiment. The research division of the state’s Legislative Counsel Bureau said it’s not in the current Nevada Revised Statutes.

“I have always said there are two things that really define our history,” said Mark Hall-Patton, a historian and retired Clark County Museum administrator. “One is water. You have to have water when you’re in the desert. But the other part of that is transportation. And our transportation history is a lot more complex than people think it is.”

People have tried transportation solutions that may seem humorous, he said, including camels.

The statute makes a distinction because there were two types of camels in use. A Bactrian camel has two humps and a dromedary camel has one, he said.

Camels have a long history in Nevada and North America, said Lauren Parry-Joseph, a paleontologist and lead park ranger at Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument.

Some early camels were tiny, about 2 feet tall, she said. But camels documented in the Nevada fossil record were large and go back at least 15 million years, she said.

Ancient camels went extinct at the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago, she said. Camels were later reintroduced from other countries.

The Army brought dromedaries to the West in the 1850s as an experiment, Hall-Patton said, and used them to transport supplies.

The effort was a pet project of then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, who had previously attempted to set up a camel corps as a U.S. senator, but twice failed when the idea was “literally laughed out of committee,” according to a 1975 Army publication.

When the Civil War came, the experiment fizzled, Hall-Patton said, and camels were sold to civilians. The Bactrian camels were imported through San Francisco by an entrepreneur who thought they would be “usable in the west as beasts of burden,” he said.

Camels were useful in early Nevada because they did well in the desert and could also sustain cold weather, according to Hall-Patton. Although haulers had to make shoes for them in rough country because they didn’t have hooves, he said, they could carry a much heavier load than an ox or mule. And they could eat nearly anything.

The camels brought necessities such as water, lumber and salt, which was used for processing ore, to mining camps, Hall-Patton said, and were so well-suited to their task that other companies that hauled freight resented camel companies, hence the 1875 law.

He said often-humorous newspaper accounts at the time said the camels also scared oxen and mules, causing them to run. One article made fun of the Legislature’s discussion of the law, according to Hall-Patton.

To settlers, camels were a novelty. The 1986 book “Las Vegas: A Desert Paradise” recounted that when miners at Mount Potosi encountered them in 1861, “Some guessed that (they) were ‘mastodons.’”

Railroads killed the freight companies, Hall-Patton said. As far as he can tell, the 1875 law had little impact because “the use of camels was pretty much on (its) way out” by that point, he said. He hasn’t found any record of someone being penalized under it.

UNLV history professor Michael Green said the camel chapter of early Nevada history is “not all that significant,” but interesting.

Camels were later used in shows on the Strip, he said. He recalls watching animals be led in for a show at the Stardust when he was about 4 and his father was a dealer there. A camel turned, looked at Green and spat all over him, he said.

Camels still live on in Nevada. In September, Virginia City held its 65th annual camel races.

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BrighamNoble on X.