A City That Gets No Respect

  In far southwestern Arizona, on the California border, lies the city of Yuma. Yuma is a city of 112,000 people and is located in one of the hottest and driest places in North America. The average yearly rainfall is only about  2 1/2 inches. Temperatures over 110 degrees are commonplace in the sweltering summer months. There has even been a 30 minute program about Yuma on The Weather Channel called "The Hottest City In America." Well, it is not the hottest city in America, although it is one of the hottest. If they were just talking about cities with over 100,000 people, then maybe it is the hottest, but there are other places that routinely record higher temperatures than Yuma does during the summer months. In Arizona, cities and towns such as Lake Havasu City, Parker, Bullhead City, Gila Bend, Buckeye,Casa Grande and Coolidge are usually hotter than Yuma. There are other places in California and Nevada that also have hotter summers than Yuma does. 
  Yuma is located about 60 miles from the head of the Sea of Cortez, in Mexico. The Sea of Cortez  is the long, narrow arm of the Pacific that separates the Baja Peninsula from mainland Mexico. Yuma's temperatures, while still dangerously hot in the summer months, are moderated slightly by the sea breezes.
  Yuma is one of the oldest European settled cities in Arizona. It sprang to life in 1854 after a U.S. Cavalry fort called Fort Yuma, was established on the other side of the Colorado River, in California. The city was originally called Colorado City, but shortly thereafter the name was changed to Arizona City. It took the name "Yuma" in 1873. When the town first got its start, Arizona and New Mexico were combined, administratively, into one territory called New Mexico Territory, but, evidently, people were not really sure if the Colorado River was the border at the time (California became a state in 1850), because the townsite was registered in San Diego and the state of California collected taxes from Yuma (or Arizona City) residents for several years after the town's birth. It is possible that San Diego was easier to reach to register than townsite than Tucson was (Phoenix did not exist yet) because to get to Tucson required a journey over the infamous "El Camino del Diablo" known as "The Road of Death" in English.
  Yuma is a city that gets no respect because it is located in an extremely hot, dry, stark and unforgiving landscape, but it is actually a very pleasant city with well maintained streets and I have noticed how clean it always looks when I am there. Yuma is also a city the oozes history. That is a definite plus for a history buff for me.    

Entering The Valley

  It is a dramatic descent from the summit of Telegraph Pass into the Gila Valley. Some maps call it the Yuma Valley.  Approximately 190,000 people live in this area in the southwest corner of Arizona.  Looking at this area on an aerial map is striking. It shows 2 ribbons of green, a narrow one for the Gila River and its accompanying valley coming from the east and a much wider ribbon of green centered along the Colorado River sandwiched by sand dunes on either side of the Colorado's "ribbon of green" and brown desert on each side of the Gila River. The Colorado River's ribbon of green empties into a wider patch of green that encompasses the northern part of the Mexican state of Baja California. The sand dunes are the Yuma Sand Dunes, south and east of Yuma and the more famous Imperial Sand Dunes in Southeastern California. Alot of movies have been filmed in the Imperial Sand Dunes. Just about any movie that takes place in the Sahara Desert is actually filmed here. The Imperial Sand Dunes were originally beach sand dunes on the shore of a long vanished northward extension of the Gulf of California, which is also called the Sea of Cortez (my preferred name). The Sea of Cortez once extended almost to present day Palm Springs, California. In fact the sea level line goes right through Indio, which is a few miles east of Palm Springs. This ancient seabed in California, west of the dunes, is a very fertile farming area called the Imperial Valley.  Old campfire rings, ash deposits and stone tools have been found all along the sea level line. The ribbon of green along the Colorado River is deep and fertile silt that was laid down by the river over the eons. The river's course wandered back and forth across this area over the centuries and the soil is extremly deep. 
  Well, back to the mountains of Fortuna. Immediately west of the mountains lies a substantial, unincorporated town called Fortuna Foothills. It has about 27,000 people and is the third largest town in Yuma County. There have been several attempts by Yuma over the years to annex Fortuna Foothills into the city, but all efforts have failed. Fortuna Foothills does not have a central business district and is completely suburban in character. It lies mostly south of Interstate 8 and abuts the boundary of the Barry Goldwater Air Force Gunnery Range, which is a massive bombing and gunnery range that stretches about 150 miles from east to west. The southern boundary of the base is the border with Mexico. The infamous El Camino del Diablo, or "the Road of Death," in English, runs through the base. It was the trail taken by fortune seekers, explorers, missionaries and wide-eyed adventurers in centuries past as the made their way to California. Many of them didn't make it, succumbing to the harsh and waterless desert. Today, the old trail reposes silently in the desert sun, serving as a haunting reminder of the perils of travel in days gone by.

Telegraph Pass

  After Old U.S. Highway 80 rejoins Interstate 8, at Exit #21, the freeway alomost immediately begins climbing through the Gila Mountains, which are also known as the Fortuna Mountains, the name I prefer. A few miles farther east, the railroad curves to the north and goes around the north end of the mountain range and then loops back south to Yuma, but U.S. Highway 80 made its way through the mountain range and, now, Interstate 8 closely follows the old highway's former path up and over Telegraph Pass.
  I am not really sure what the elevation is at the summit of Telegraph Pass because it seems like every map I have looked at and every book I have looked at gives a different elevation. I have seen the following elevations for Telegraph Pass: 767 feet above sea level; 844 feet above sea level; 921 feet above sea level; 1,052 feet above sea level; 1,107 feet above sea level and 1,903 feet above sea level. At any rate, it is a steep climb up and over the Fortuna Mountains. The elevation at Wellton, east of the mountain range, is 256 feet and the elevation of Yuma, to the west, is 141 feet.
  When Interstate 8 threads its way through the mountain range, it is a dramatic ascent up to the pass and then an event steeper descent down the west side of the mountains. The first time I ever drove through this area, I was taken aback by the fact that while the freeway goes through the mountain range, the westbound lanes of the interstate cross over the eastbound lanes on a viaduct. The traffic goes on the left for slightly more than one mile and then the westbound lanes cross back over to the other side and resume their logical place. It is a little strange to see westbound traffic on the left and eastbound traffic on the right, reminiscent of the United Kingdom. Since then, one other highway in Arizona has been built in the same manner. State Highway 87  between Mesa and Payson was built in the same way when it was converted from a two-lane highway to a four-lane, divided highway. Traffic on Highway 87 goes on the left for about a mile.
 A drive up and over Telegraph Pass east of Yuma will reveal abandoned stretches of Old Highway 80 above the freeway. There is one piece of the old highway that is about 75 feet long and it just dead-ends on both ends of it and, beyond the dead-ends, are steep dropoffs to the freeway below.