The following account is by Neil Wemple, who graduated from Lassen Junior College in 1938:  “The story of the camel as mascot for Lassen Junior College is a bit unlikely and interesting and its goes like this. I had thought the selection of the camel had been the work of some of the “old grads” back in the late twenties. Someone had told me this, but it was not so. So I was determined that it was so and when I came upon the truth I could scarcely believe the results of my own research efforts. I wrote many letters, made many phone calls, studied many LUHS and LJC publications and was very embarrassed to discover that the evolution and adoption of the camel came about in my first year at Lassen Junior College in 1937! The advice and efforts of Bud and Don Cady, Adelene and Abe Jensen and my sister Deese Theodore lead me to Frank Rice and Phil Hall, former Lassen Junior College Forestry students who knew the answer. I was finally able to find some old publications which made the first mention of the camel in March of 1938. Frank Rice states that the camel began in 1937, and I know when I entered Lassen Junior College in the 1936-37 year we were called the camels.

Lassen Junior College was first authorized and chartered by the Lassen County Board of Supervisors and the State of California in 1925 as a two year college. It was established on the same campus as the Lassen Union High School. It struggled the first few years and did not seem to have a mascot for its athletic teams. Actually for several years the student body was not large enough to field athletic teams, and the several athletes the school possessed usually played with high school teams. In 1932 Lassen Junior College grew to the point where it could field some athletic teams, but at that time the teams were not called “Camels.” My study reveals the following sequence of athletic team nicknames: Prior to 1932 – the J.C.; 1932-1933 – Red Devils; 1934-1936 Jaysee; 1937 – Jaybird & Camel (Derived from the letters J&C)’ 1937 onward – Camels with the slogan “Camel Caravan.”

It appears that the selection of the Camel as a mascot was probably the work of Forestry students of Lassen Junior College. The Camel was selected initially because: (1) the word camel began with the letter “C”, (2) The camel was a unique and seldom used mascot and (3) The camel was a very strong, reliable animal of great endurance.

I never heard of any camels getting as far north as Lassen County unless they were part of a circus. But I didn’t care, I thought the camel was a good mascot anyway and as a matter of tradition should remain the school mascot. No other school I could think of had a similar mascot, but I could name at least a half dozen schools that were Bears, Wildcats or Cougars—very ordinary.

Then in 1948 someone in Lassen Junior College brought up a thing called, “logical thought,” wherein it was pointed out that there was not a camel in its natural habitat within 7000 miles of the Lassen Junior College campus. The logic being “we should pick out a mascot that actually resides in the area, such as a Cougar.” So it was the camel was out and the Cougar was in. Tradition was shot.

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