• Field Notes
    • Growing Pains
    • Divinations
    • Fixed
    • Ghost Light Theaters
    • Intrepid Girl
    • Vanishing Point
    • In Time Suspended
    • Creosote Times
    • Cloud Journal
    • Bio/CV
    • Contact
  • SHOP
Menu

Rachel Phillips

  • Portfolio
    • Field Notes
    • Growing Pains
    • Divinations
    • Fixed
    • Ghost Light Theaters
    • Intrepid Girl
    • Vanishing Point
    • In Time Suspended
  • Projects Underway
    • Creosote Times
    • Cloud Journal
  • About
    • Bio/CV
    • Contact
  • SHOP
×

Creosote Times

Notes on my developing project about the ancient creosote rings of the Mojave desert and their connections to changing desert ecology and the impacts of recent human history


Visit with Topsy

Rachel Phillips June 27, 2025

I had a wonderful visit, perhaps even pilgrimage, to see the skeleton of a camel named Topsy in the Mammalogy Collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

My sincere thanks to Dr. Shannen Robson, manager of the Mammalogy Collection, who was incredibly responsive to my interest in Topsy. She generously spent an entire morning with Chris and me, showing us not only Topsy, but giving us an epic tour of the specimen preparation and storage areas at the museum. Dr. Robson’s interest in connecting with artists around the collection was more than I could have ever hoped for.

_DSC4549_table with bones.jpg
_DSC4580_red pencil notes.jpg

The museum has a super post about Topsy’s probably sensationalized but nonetheless imagination-capturing biography that includes being one of the original camels imported by the Army in the 1850’s, time spent in circuses, zoos and early motion pictures as the 19th century turned to the 20th, before finally expiring at 100 years-old in the Griffith Park Zoo in the early 1930’s and being sent to the NHMLAC. Regardless of the veracity of the details, it's clear she had a difficult life, as revealed in serious spinal injuries to her skeleton. Also, as Dr. Robson put it, she has been working hard as a specimen in the collection for nearly 100 years, waiting patiently for the needs of science following her death in 1934. Dr. Robson explained that due to the La Brea Tarpits, the museum’s focus has always been on paleontology. As such, modern animals like Topsy appear infrequently in the collection, and are mostly used as references for prehistoric finds from the Tarpits.

This project has been in large part about the vital role of repositories in preserving evidence, and the different modes of evidence contained within the story—from the living evidence of the ancient creosote rings in the Lucerne Valley, to the 1863 photographs of Rudolph D’Heureuse.

Pulling out the five wooden boxes in a cabinet holding Topsy’s skeleton and getting to hold those remains was a tangible experience of the forms of physical evidence conserved in natural history museums, and the truly wondrous evolutionary history revealed in an “ordinary but extraordinary” camel like Topsy.

_DSC4593_skull.jpg
_DSC4591_skull on table.jpg
_DSC4584_camel foot.jpg
_DSC4545_bones.jpg
_DSC4604_cartelidge.jpg
DSC4563_holding bone tag.jpg

All photographs in the post are of the specimen Topsy made in June, 2025 at the Natural History Museum Los Angeles County’s Mammalogy Collection. Special thanks to the museum and to Collections Manager, Mammalogy, Dr. Shannen Robson.

90 Miles from Needles Podcast →

Creosote Times Index

  • 2025
    • Mar 2, 2025 Creosote Times: Introduction
    • Mar 3, 2025 Found with Photography
    • Mar 4, 2025 Camels 1/3: Origins
    • Mar 12, 2025 Camels 2/3: Return
    • Mar 15, 2025 Camels 3/3: Fate
    • Mar 25, 2025 Creosote Real Estate
    • Mar 28, 2025 Creosote Photograms
    • Mar 28, 2025 High Desert Test Sites
    • Jun 8, 2025 90 Miles from Needles Podcast
    • Jun 27, 2025 Visit with Topsy

Cloud Journal Index

  • 2025
    • Mar 3, 2025 Oracles: introduction
    • Mar 3, 2025 Personal Data and the Constitution
    • Mar 4, 2025 Wikileaks and AWS
    • Mar 16, 2025 Print Magic
    • Mar 23, 2025 Spring Work
    • May 8, 2025 A Stitch in Clouds...
    • May 8, 2025 Web Pair

Shop

Pocket Book of Wonderment: Bertha
Pocket Book of Wonderment: Bertha
$5.50

Minted: NFT Manifesto Minted: NFT Manifesto Minted: NFT Manifesto
Minted: NFT Manifesto
from $25.00