HI JOLLY
NATIONAL
MONUMENT
Arizona's adventure with
camels began in 1855 when
Jefferson Davis, then Secretary
of War and later President of the
Confederacy, was sold on the idea of
importing camels to build and travel on
a wagon road through the Southwest.
A buyer was dispatched to the Middle East
where he bought 33 camels, then loaded them
on a ship modified to accommodate their bulk
and sailed to Indianola, Texas. Another batch of
44 of the beasts followed. Authorities sent to the
Middle East for men who spoke camel, and that's
where Hadji Ali comes into the story. The famed
camel driver was born Philip Tedro, a Greek born in
Syria. He converted to Islam and made a pilgrimage
to Mecca, hence his first name, Hadji Ali.
He and another camel driver, Yiorgos Caralambo (who
came to be called Greek George) were hired to teach the
soldiers how to deal with the animals. Soldiers couldn't
pronounce Hadji Ali, and he became known as Hi Jolly.
The camels were a great success. They could carry two or
three times as much as Army mules. They could go with-
out water for much longer than could horses or mules,
and most of the desert forage was fine with them.
But the Civil War intervened, Jefferson Davis changed
jobs, and without his support the project was aban-
doned. Some of the camels were sold; others escaped
into the wild. Hi Jolly bought two of them and operated
a freight route between the Colorado River and the
mining towns of eastern Arizona for two years.
In 1880, he became a U.S. citizen, started calling
himself Philip Tedro and married Gertrudis Serna of
Tucson. When he retired, he moved to Quartzsite
and prospected around the region using a mule. He
died in 1902. The camels thrived for a while, but
eventually died out. However, as late as the 1930s
and 1940s there were unsubstantiated reports of
camels spotted in the wild. One story was that
of the Red Camel, which roamed the desert
with a headless human skeleton on its back.
The monument was placed on the na-
tional register in 2011.
Entrance to
Hi Jolly Monument is off N. Kofa,
1 block north
of West Main
Street, Quartzsite, Arizona.
14 QuartzsiteVisitorGuide.com
