The Hells Canyon Complex was controversial before even being built, ever since the Idaho public scrutinized the Idaho Power Company’s request to license three dams on the Snake River in 1947. During the New Deal era, public power—a method of energy…

Desert National Wildlife Refuge is the largest wildlife refuge in the continental United States, spreading over 1.6 million acres of land and six different mountain ranges in Southern Nevada within the Clark, Lincoln, and Nye Counties. President…

Along with two of his friends, Hector Lee, a student from Fillmore, Utah, discovered a camel skull in a cave in the lava beds of nearby Meadow Hot Springs in 1928. He passed it along to professor A.L. Matthews of the University of Utah, who then…

As an instrumental wagon route across the Rocky Mountains, the Mullan Road carried much of the traffic between Fort Benton in what is now Montana to Fort Walla Walla in present-day Washington. With the discovery of placer and quartz mines in places…

Kingman’s newspaper, The Mohave County Miner, reported on February 25, 1893 that the “Red Ghost” had finally been laid to rest. The Red Ghost, the story explained, was a camel reported to have trampled a woman near Eagle Creek. On later sightings,…

In Virginia City, camels arrived in 1865 to convey salt. Nevada, famed for its Comstock lode and peppered with mining towns such as Virginia City, derived much of its wealth and population from ore deposits. However, translating these deposits into…

Fort Defiance marks the starting point of Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale’s 1857–1858 wagon road survey across the 35th parallel to the Colorado River, the very first deployment of the US Camel Corps. The government was eager to boost the…