Xirogos Xaralampo
West Hollywood’s unlikely first settler was a Turkish camel driver of Greek descent. Born Xiorgos Xaralampo around 1830 in Smyrna (present-day Izmir, Turkey), he received little or no education and was practically illiterate when he entered adulthood. In 1856, Georgios was given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At a camel market near the port, he encountered agents who were buying camels for the U.S. Army Quartermaster. They offered to hire him to accompany the camels to America and then train enlisted men on how to put the camels to use. He took them up on the offer, left his homeland for the United States.
The journey took Yiorgos and the camels 6,000 miles from Turkey across the ocean to a port on the Texas coast. There were several other Turkish cameleers on the trip with similar names to Yiorgos, and along the way, the American sailors gave Yiorgos Xaralampo a unique identifier that stuck with him for the rest of his life. They called him “Greek George.” From Texas, he drove the Army herd another 1,500 miles across the Mojave Desert and over the Sierra Range to a dusty, end-of-the-trail pueblo called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula, a name that has been shortened to two letters: L.A. He worked with the camels for the Army off and on for the next five years.
Greek George played a small but significant role in a pre-Civil War, all-but-forgotten historic enterprise. The establishment of what came to be known unofficially as the Camel Corps was the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps’ first official field test of new equipment. In California, the camels were tested for speed and endurance in hauling heavy loads and in battlefield-like conditions. They passed muster militarily, which is not surprising. Camels had been used in battle for centuries in the Middle East. During the Civil War, however, the Union Army abandoned the camel experiment and, in 1864, auctioned off its camels. Major Henry Hancock purchased a few dromedaries – single-humped camels – and brought them and their driver, Greek George Caralambo, to live on a remote, unpopulated patch now known as West Hollywood
Spoils of War
The story of the U.S. Army’s camel corps experiment began in 1848, after the U.S.-Mexican War ended. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, Mexico ceded 525,000 square miles of territory to the United States, an expanse that now includes Arizona, New Mexico, California, and parts of Colorado. The need to establish U.S. sovereignty over this vast new territory became more urgent when gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill, California, just nine days before the treaty was signed.
Traveling to the western territories presented significant challenges. There were two main routes: by ship around South America or overland through harsh deserts and the daunting Rocky and Sierra mountain ranges. Today, shipping to the West Coast is done through the Panama Canal, which opened in 1914. In the 1850s, the preferred sea route involved a lengthy journey around Cape Horn to reach the Pacific coast of South America, followed by a sail north to California. Another option was to sail to the Gulf Coast of Central America, cross the Isthmus of Panama overland, and catch another ship on the Pacific side. Traveling cross-country from the east was particularly difficult due to the lack of navigable roads, as the construction of the transcontinental railroad and modern highways was still decades away.
Among the proposals considered in Washington for opening up the West was the use of camels, the “ships of the desert,” for transport. It may sound unusual today, but at the time, camels made sense given the limited options available. They had been used in the Middle East for centuries for transportation and military operations. Camels were capable of carrying heavier loads over longer distances than horses or mules, and they required less water and forage than other pack animals.
Major Henry C. Wayne of the Army Quartermaster Corps made the first official proposal to import camels for military use. In his brief to the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee, he described how camels had been successfully used by Napoleon’s forces in Egypt and by the British military in Crimea.
Wayne’s proposal convinced the committee’s chairman, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, who would later become the president of the Confederacy in 1861. The proposal stalled until after the 1852 presidential election, when newly elected President Franklin Pierce appointed Jefferson Davis as his Secretary of War. With President Pierce’s backing, Secretary Davis lobbied Congress to fund the Army’s camel experiment.
In 1855, Congress allocated $30,000 (equivalent to about $1.2 million today) for testing the camels in what became the Quartermaster Corps’ first field test of new equipment. If successful, the initiative could lead to the importation of hundreds of camels for service across the American West.
With funding secured, Major Wayne went abroad to procure camels. He and a small team of officers traveled across Europe, studying camels in London, Paris, and Italy, where they visited the Grand Duke of Tuscany’s 200-year-old camel farm. After stops in Egypt, Tunis, Malta, Turkey, Constantinople, and a foray into Crimea to see military camels in action, Major Wayne and his men began making purchases at camel markets.
By November 1856, Wayne had acquired approximately 75 camels — both dromedaries (one-humped) and Bactrians (two-humped) — from markets around the Mediterranean. They also hired eight camel drivers in Smyrna (now Izmir), Turkey, to accompany the camels to the United States and train their Army handlers. One of the drivers was Hadj Ali, a Syrian of Greek descent, whose name was quickly Americanized to “Hi Jolly.”
Another driver was “Greek George” Caralambo, born Yiorgos Xaralampo to Greek parents in Turkey around 1830. He would become West Hollywood’s earliest-known resident. (One of the drivers, Plutarco Elias, abandoned the camel corps in Texas and settled in Mexico. Legend has it that he was the father of Plutarco Elías Calles, president of Mexico from 1924 to 1928.)
Wayne’s team purchased 74 camels and transported them in two shipments on the U.S.S. Supply from Turkey to Indianola, Texas. The first shipment arrived on February 10, 1857, and the second group followed two months later. The Army moved the camels overland from the port to Camp Verde, Texas, where they rested and recuperated after their voyage.
Westward Trek
In June 1857, Greek George, Hi Jolly, and 25 camels were assigned to an expedition led by Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a Mexican War hero, avid western explorer, and California’s surveyor general. The survey party also included 44 soldiers, civilian staff such as cooks and their helpers, and a few dozen horses and mules. The camels were loaded with 600 to 800 pounds of supplies — three to four times the load that could be carried by mules. This expedition, initiated by a bill to construct a federal road along the 35th Parallel from El Paso, Texas, to Fort Yuma, Arizona, would lay the groundwork for what would eventually become Route 66 and I-40.