US Camel Corps and “Hi Jolly”
Arizona is America’s 48th state – the last state added besides Hawaii and Alaska – which are non-contiguous. They’re not connected, but Arizona is – it’s right there between California and New Mexico. When Arizona’s star was added to the American flag in 1914, the land had long been occupied by people – and perhaps a few other – more mysterious things. Where there are people, mystery seems to follow.
In the late 1800s residents in the dry open country began seeing a few frightening figures moving mysteriously in the night. Tall, smelly, and skittish – these strange creatures didn’t stick around long to figure out – but they whipped dogs and horses into a frenzy, scared people with their size in the darkness, and even trampled a few creatures – humans included – along the way. Citizens grew so alarmed that they sent out hunting parties to track down the monster – which they called the Red Ghost. For years it seemed like the Red Ghost would pop up in towns and on farms miles and miles apart. It was otherworldly. People began to think – maybe there wasn’t just one Red Ghost. Maybe there were several. Ohhh.
They were right about one thing: it’s true there were many of these mysterious creatures. But they were wrong about another. These weren’t ghosts. Don’t be silly. They were camels. Wild camels in America? Well, not exactly wild, but yes, Camels running wild in America. I mean, if you haven’t ever seen a camel before and one sneaks up on you in the night – you can imagine it might be a bit scary, right? Sounds like they were smelly too. So that might add to the fright for the surprised people. I don’t blame ‘em. Camels were not an expected nor familiar sight in America.
This particular story of camels in the US begins with Jefferson Davis. If that name sounds familiar, that’s because he was one of the American politicians who turned their backs on the American Constitution and tried to secede – when many southern states tried to start a separate country in order to preserve slavery. During The American Civil War he was elected President of the Confederacy – in opposition to Abraham Lincoln. But before all of that, Davis was a US politician. In fact, he was Secretary of War for United States. And while in that role, he decided the American Army needed camels.
Why? Well the US Army, and many others were making their way across the south west – which was dry and inhospitable. When it came to hauling good and people across the American desert, mules and donkeys and horses weren’t cutting it. Camels, on the other hand, are really good at this, exact specific thing. It’s their superpower. That and spitting. Camels, are really strong – stronger than those other animals. They can carry more, and importantly, they can survive on plants that mules and donkeys can’t – which was a problem in the American desert. Not a lot of great food options out there, ya know. Over the desert, camels are also faster, need less water, and don’t need to be shoe’d to manage the sandy and rocky terrain. Camels have perfect feet for the environment. It was a no brainer.
So some government officials took a ship to Turkey with money to go on a little camel shopping spree. Because they knew they’d need help locating and negotiating for the pack animals, they found a few locals to help – one of whom was a man named Hadji Ali. Hadji and the others assisted in finding 33 domesticated camels, which were loaded on the ship and sailed across the ocean to Texas. A year later, the Americans returned and they had a message for Hadji Ali.
Camels are cool. But we don’t know what we’re doing. Shoulda seen that one coming. No one in the American Army knows two humps about a camel. So…Wanna come help us?
And that is how a man named Hadji Ali became the most famous figure in what was called the U.S. Camel Corps. He travelled with a few more camels and a few other camel experts from the Middle East to the American south to make camel history. At least for a while.
Hadji Ali was born Philip Tedro to a Greek mother and a Syrian father in modern day Turkey. We’re not totally sure when little baby future-Hadji was born, but he was definitely a full-blown adult when he arrived in Texas in 1856. Before his time with the US Army, he had worked with camels for the French Army. And at some point in adulthood he converted to the Muslim faith – that was when he changed his name from Philip Tedro to Hadji Ali.
The American soldiers in the southwest had not heard a name quite like that before. Hadji Ali, may have been hard to say to an unfamiliar ear, or maybe the soldiers dismissed the nuance of the syllables and reduced it to something they were familiar with. Hadji Ali became known to southwest and the history books as Hi Jolly.
Hi Jolly, or Hadji Ali, as I imagine he’d prefer to be called, was a lead camel drover for the Army as they blazed new paths across the desert from Texas to California. Camels, or course are temperamental – they can be stubborn. And they can be mean. Plenty of soldiers got a face full of foul phlegm from the four-legged creatures.
You talking camel spit? Oh I’ve been victimized by that gooey-Patooey. Watch yourself around a mad camel. You’re just minding your own business, and then bam – you get hit with the slobber slam. But I never saw Hi Jolly catch a lougie.
You mean Hadji Ali. Yes, Hadji was different. He understood the camels. Which is more than could be said about the horses and mules who were often around. They didn’t understand the transplant creatures at all. The Army learned quickly that horses hate camels. They’re scared of ‘em. So this created some problem as parties moved west to mark paths for future travelers and hauled cargo from desert points A to desert points B. The other thing that the soldiers grew to resent was the smell. Unbathed camels can work up a brutal stank, and there’s not a lot of places for bathing in the desert. So while they were very helpful, strong and fast, no one wanted to be around them. Whether the lougies were flying or not. It was a real Catch-22
Speaking of repetitive digits, there’s a famous roadway in America called Route 66. Created in the 1920s, it was one of the first and most important highways – paved from Chicago to Los Angeles. Cars had replaced horses and camels, and people could travel the broad continent by wheel – so it was filled with attractions, motor lodges, hotels, restaurants and tourist traps. Imagine neon and old cars – sort of like the town of Radiator Springs in the Cars movies, if you’re familiar. For years Route 66 defined a slice of American Culture. But that historic roadway was actually once a camel trail. At least part of it was. Between Texas and California, the Army surveyed and planned a path along the 35th parallel – finding it to be the ideal place for transportation routes. Hadji Ali was lead camel driver on that expedition and in 70 years that path from 1857 would become the southwestern portion of Route 66.
The Camel experiment continued for years, but when the Civil War began in 1861, the Army was focused on other things. So they sold some of the camels. And the ones that went unpurchased were just set lose in the American desert. Hadji Ali bought a few of his favorites and kept working. He’d haul cargo, work as a scout, or often sell water to thirsty people travelling across the desert to California. They were happy for the refreshment but also excited to encounter the one and only Hi Jolly, who was already a legend in his own time.
He married, had a family, and lived the end of his life in Quartzite, Arizona. Today there is a monument in his honor, a small pyramid with a camel on top, and the town holds an annual Hi Jolly parade in his honor.
He died in 1902, but the camels roaming the desert outlived him by years. People on passing trains would often see their silhouettes in the desert skyline. And of course, there were reports of the Red Ghost for decades after Hadji Ali had left this earth. After a while, the fear of mysterious ghosts was replaced with the excitement of seeing a legendary camel. There were hundreds of reported sightings, however you probably won’t find them if you go looking for them today. If you do encounter one though, watch out for lougies.
Elisha Otis and The Elevator
Camels and horses and mules and such move stuff around pretty well. But it’s a very back and forth overland sort of moving that they are good at. If there is a knock against the animals, besides all the camel spit and horse manure, it is that they are mostly earth-bound. None of those creatures are gonna help you with what those in the biz call “vertical transportation” – which just means “moving stuff up and down.” For that you need an elevator.
Elevators are nothing new. Plenty of times during the development of human civilization our fellow humans of the past used ropes and pulleys to lift platforms. With water wheels, animals pulling, or good old fashioned people power, these made lifting heavy objects to a high point much easier. Of course, it wasn’t just stuff – people were lifted along the way too. At the Palace of Versailles, French King Louis XV had a human powered elevator called the flying chair. Thanks to the hard work of someone pulling a rope to lift his royal heine higher, the flying chair carried the king a staggering distance of one floor.
But here’s the thing about early lifts and elevators. Sure, they could go up, but thanks to gravity and broken tension ropes, they could easily come crashing down too. And that was bad. Didn’t matter if you were on it, under it, or just nearby – the story was the same: the rope holding you breaks and you go ka-blam-o. These crashes happened a lot in early American factories. So for the most part people didn’t trust elevators – or at least didn’t volunteer to be the person on or under one. And for the most part that was okay because until the late 1800s, most buildings were not very tall. Couple flights of stairs and you’re at the top. Take the steps two at a time and you’re there even faster. But a lift sure could make getting heavy stuff up to a top floor much easier.
Once the hero of our story, a man named Elisha Otis ushered in the golden age of “vertical transportation,” buildings could get taller and taller. And they did. This lead us to the first skyscrapers.
But here I have to pause and warn you that architecture nerds will argue about which building actually was the first sky scraper in America until they are out of breath – and not because of all the stairs – rather just because they like to argue about it so much. Consider yourself warned and if you want to join the argument, please read up on the candidates.
Well, as I’ve stated, I believe the Equitable Life Building in New York to be the first Sky Scraper. It was finished in 1870 and it used an elevator to get people to all seven storys.
Oh, poppycock! You wouldn’t know a skyscraper from a window scraper, you architechturally challenged sea turtle. You did get the city right though, Everyone knows the first skyscraper was New York’s Produce Exchange building.
Someone said there were some architecture experts around here, but I sure don’t see any. I just hear two silly geese honking on about something they know nothing about. New York was not home to the first skyscraper. Chicago has always ruled the sky scraper world. Sky Scraper numero uno is the Home Insurance Building – thanks to its size and iron skeleton.
Skeleton? Yikes! Is it haunted?
I mean sort of, I know it haunts the dreams of your two buildings because they’ll never know what it’s like to be the first to scrape the sky. Sorry suckers.
Whatever the case may be, none of these buildings are around anymore. Ironically, we knocked them down to build bigger buildings a long time ago.
Anyway, let’s meet Mr. Elevator himself, Elisha Otis. But rather than meet him when he was a kid on a farm in Vermont, or a young man making wagons, or a slightly older man working in a bed factory, lets meet him in 1853 while he is suspended on a platform high up in the air at America’s first World’s Fair.
Elisha Otis wasn’t a daredevil exactly, he was an inventor with an invention to sell who was willing to thrill people to sell that invention. And that invention? Well, it was an elevator. Yes, I’m fully aware that I’ve said people had already invented elevators. They had. So everyone watching Elisha knew what it was. No surprise there.
The surprise for the crowd at New York’s Crystal Palace building came when the dangling Mr. Otis gave a signal, high up in the air. The signal told his assistant, or in some sources his son, to swing an axe, or in some sources a sword. Whether it was a boring old axe or a dramatically cool sword, his “assonstant” cut the rope holding his elevator platform. Now, in any other elevator seen by anyone else, anywhere in the world at the time, this would have been certain doom. So the crowd gasped at the sight of the severed safety rope. Everyone fully expected him to free fall in his open elevator down to the ground floor and suffer the consequences – which would have been fatal and gruesome. And since the elevator car was open for demonstration purposes the guests would have had to witness the gore. Maybe even head home with some red stains on their fancy clothes.
But Mr. Otis did not fall – at least not far. The elevator car dropped a bit and then stopped. The ol’ drop and stop left him completely safe. See, the real magic of the Otis Elevator, as seen at America’s first world’s fair, was not the elevator itself, but rather the safety brake it used. There was no way for his new elevator car to fall – if the tension rope broke, it simply dropped a few inches before the ratcheted brake system stopped it and kept everyone safe. So long ka-blam-mo, hello easy vertical transpo.
So it was a big deal and people realized it almost immediately. Over the next two years Otis, who had gone into business with his two sons, got orders to build 36 platform lifts in just two years. Most of these were large elevators to lift freight, cargo, and merchandise in factories. They saved workers lots of time and energy. Then in 1857 they got their first order for a passenger elevator – inside a building housing a glass company on Broadway in New York City. This was the way of the future.
More elevators meant taller and taller buildings were possible. Some of the first businesses to take advantage of the new safe and strong elevators were hotels. First off, more stories means more rooms. More rooms mean more money. The math was simple for hotels – and when you added that the elevators couldn’t go ka-bla-mo anymore, the math got even easier.
Not sure if you’re aware, but these days the fanciest, most expensive rooms are at the tippy top of most hotels. That’s not how it always was. Think about it – if you’re rich, do you wanna walk up a bunch of flights of steps to get to your room? That doesn’t sound luxurious. In the days before elevators, if you could afford it, you stayed on the ground floor. But while it may have been easier to get to, the first floor brought some bad things too. City streets can be noisy and on the ground floor all that noise is right outside your window. So are the smells of food carts selling to all those loud people outside. The food might smell good, or it might not, but the garbage that people left on the street certainly never brought pleasant odors. So all of that stank and sound might make for a not great stay at an expensive hotel.
After Otis made it safe for you to transport yourself easily, vertically speaking, the top floor became the place to be. No street noise, no stinky food and garbage smells, and incredible city views in many cases. The Penthouse has it all. And the Otis made it all possible.
Unfortunately Elisha Otis did not live long after his great successes. He died in April 1861, actually the same week the American Civil War began. Before he died, however, he did get back to work on one of his favorite pet inventions; one he had set aside when the elevator biz took off. Elisha had a thing for fresh bread, and created an automatic bread baking oven. He’s more remembered for the elevators these days.
You can still find the Otis label in elevators all over the world these days. His sons kept the company moving and it grew to, no pun intended, great heights. Today they are the largest manufacturer of elevators, escalators, and moving walkways in the world. There is an Otis Elevator in the Eiffel Tower, the CN Tower, and the Empire State Building. Likewise, the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, has Otis Elevators. 57 of them in total. And they are fast – they can take a passenger from the ground floor to the observation deck on the 125th floor in just about one minute. That’s some speedy vertical transportation.
While it’s far from the first, there is no argument among skyscraper nerds as to whether the Burj Khalifa is or isn’t a skyscraper. It is 2,722 feet tall. By Comparison all three of those first skyscrapers were under 180 feet tall. Elisha Otis probably never dreamt such a building was possible when he first cut the rope in 1853. But I bet he’d be confident of his elevator no matter how high it was.
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