Greek George
Greek-American
1828 – 1913
Greek George (Yiorgos Caralambo, c. 1828–1913) was a Greek camel driver brought to America in the 1850s for the U.S. Army's Camel Corps experiment. He packed supplies across the Southwest during Southern California's mining era and later settled near Los Angeles.
Biography
The man remembered as Greek George was born about 1828 in Ottoman Asia Minor; his name is variously rendered Yiorgos or George Caralambo, and accounts of his origins and identity differ, as contemporary records confused several of the "Greek" camel men. He came to the United States in the 1850s as one of the camel drivers hired for the U.S. Army's Camel Corps experiment, arriving with a shipload of camels at Indianola, Texas, in 1856.
Greek George helped drive and pack camels across the Southwest, including work connected with the Beale wagon road and overland supply routes, and remained in Southern California after the Army abandoned the camel experiment during the Civil War — the same era in which pack trains supplied mountain mining camps such as Holcomb Valley. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1867 under the name George Allen and settled on a rancho in the Cahuenga Valley near present-day West Hollywood.
His adobe earned a permanent footnote in California history in May 1874, when the bandit Tiburcio Vásquez was captured there by a Los Angeles County posse. Greek George lived out his days in the Los Angeles area and died on September 2, 1913, in Montebello; his grave was designated a California Historical Landmark in 1958.