Yuma

History at the Crossing Yuma became the county seat in 1871. From 1864 the Army's Quartermaster Depot on the bluff above the river stored supplies shipped up from the Gulf of California for forts across the Southwest. When the Southern Pacific bridged the river in 1877 it also bought the Colorado Steam Navigation Company, the only steamboat line on the river, and Yuma replaced Port Isabel at the river mouth as the base for navigation. The territory's first prison opened on the same bluff in 1876.

What to See The two state historic parks are a short walk apart above the river. Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park keeps the original strap-iron cells, the dark cell and the guard tower of the prison that held 3,069 inmates between 1876 and 1909. A little to the west, Colorado River State Historic Park has five buildings from the Quartermaster Depot, with exhibits on the Army, steamboats and the irrigation works that turned the valley into farmland. Just east of that park you can see the outlet of the Colorado River Siphon, completed in 1912, which still carries canal water from California under the river into Arizona.

Arizona State Parks also points visitors to the Old Town Yuma district around Main Street, where some of the city's oldest buildings stand; the Sanguinetti House Museum, in an 1870s merchant's home; the Yuma Proving Ground Heritage Center, on military history from the Second World War on; and the Yuma East Wetlands, a restored stretch of riverbank reached by a trail from the prison park. Laguna Dam, completed in 1909, was the first dam on the Colorado. North of town, Imperial National Wildlife Refuge protects 30 miles of river and backwater. Los Algodones in Baja California, about eight miles from the depot park, draws many visitors; a passport or passport card is required at the border.

Farming and the Military Yuma's sun and river water make it one of the country's great winter vegetable regions. Yuma County grows about 90 percent of the leafy vegetables produced in the US from November to March, mostly lettuce, and on New Year's Eve 2018 the city marked the occasion by dropping a head of iceberg lettuce from its water tower. Marine Corps Air Station Yuma and the Army's Yuma Proving Ground, an active test center just north of the city, give it a large military population.

Climate Of any populated place in the contiguous US, Yuma is the driest and sunniest, with 3.36 inches of rain in an average year. Temperatures reach 100°F on about 117 days a year, usually from April through October, and in July and August they fall short of 100°F on only a day or two. The record high is 124°F, set in 1995. Winters are warm, and between 70,000 and more than 85,000 out-of-state visitors spend the season here. Snow has been recorded only once, on December 12, 1932.

Getting There Phoenix is about 182 road miles away, roughly three and a half hours by car, and Lake Havasu City about 155 miles, a little over three hours. The two historic parks are on the bluff by the river at the north edge of downtown.