Text reads, in part: Mr. Keaveny, who has made a study of early California history for the past twenty years, has spared no effort to preserve and restore what remains of old Drum Barracks. There are fourteen rooms ... Early in 1860 and through 1861 an army post was maintained in San Pedro ... housed in tents ... Gen. Phineas Banning, whose enterprise and foresight had built the town of Wilmington, offered an adequate tract of land here ... Drum Barracks was there constructed in 1862 and named in honor of the Adjutant-General of the Army, Gen. Drum ... Here was the scene of the first and only government experiment with camels. ... When Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Pierce, he ordered the purchase of seventy-five camels and dromedaries from Egypt and Arabia to be used to transport munitions and supplies ... The camels ... were finally sold to the highest bidders at Drum Barracks at the close of the Civil War. ...
