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.