Sonoran Desert Camels

These are a few of the pencil illustrations I did for the upcoming book by Gary Paul Nabhan, Desert Terroir, by University of Texas Press in 2012.

Above: One might think the author is pulling your leg and categorize this with sand trout and jackalopes, but the US Army Camel Corps really imported camels for use in supply trains from Texas to California just before the Civil War.

When the Camel Corps was eventually disbanded, (cowboys and cavalry had a preference for horses) some of the camels were set free in the wild, and camel hunting shows up in several O’odham oral traditions and historical records. Here I had an opportunity to depict the cognitive dissonance of two desert clich?s in the same piece.

The saguaros that kindly posed for this were on Tumamoc Hill.