This year marks the centennial of Route 66, and Arizona's stretch of the highway traces a path first charted in the 1850s by explorer Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who used U.S. Army-imported camels to survey the terrain—an experiment that was ultimately abandoned during the Civil War but helped lay the groundwork for the modern road.

“I mean, they were serious,” says Natalie Koch, professor of geography and the environment,native of Tuscon, Arizona, and author of Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia. “They were dead serious about making this work. I don’t want to say that this was just some crazy people that were disingenuous in their efforts.”

“A lot of Arizonans just kind of write [it] off, but I was beginning to realize that none of this is just passive, idle curiosities,” says Koch. “Like, this is a story of how Arizona was colonized. It’s kind of cute, it’s funny. There’s a little pyramid with a camel on top. It seems innocuous, but that’s the violence of the colonial project.”

Read more in the KJZZ article, “Long before cars, camels paved the way for Arizona’s stretch of Route 66.”