The Death of a River

  As I have already said, the Colorado River, when it flows past Yuma, is but a pittance of what it once was. The river is 1,450 miles long if you measure from its official source high in the Never Summer Range in Rocky Mountain National Park, north of Denver, Colorado. If you measure from the river's actual source, the head of the Green River in the Wind River Mountains of central Wyoming, it is over 1,700 miles long. The definition of the beginning of a river is the most distant source, which means the Green River in this case. This makes the Colorado one of the longest rivers in the United States and the world. For most of its lower length, it is still a big river. That being said, it is still not as big as it once was. It is one of the most over-allocated rivers in the world, quenching the thirst of a dry land that has a far bigger population than it can support. When the waters of the Colorado were divided up between the various states that it flows through, it was an unusually rainy year--1927. The river has not had that much water in it since! As a result, the Colorado no longer reaches the Sea of Cortez. It has one of the biggest deltas in the world and yet the delta is usually dry. The only time there is water in the lower reaches of the river is either in unusually wet years or when tidewater from the Sea of Cortez makes its way up the myriad of sunbaked channels at the river's mouth.
  Yuma was once extremely prone to flooding because of two things. It was at the confluence of the Colorado and Gila Rivers and also because of a phenomenon called the
tidal bore. A tidal bore occurred when the powerful current of the Colorado, augmented by the once powerful flow of the Gila River, collided head on with tidewater from the Sea of Cortez. This phenomenon created a huge wall of water that spread out over the surrounding desert and inundated everything in its path. Well, since the Gila River is now dry and the Colorado is now a mere rivulet compared to what it once was, the tidal bore is no longer an issue. 
  The fact that Yuma, one of the driest cities in the world, is no longer flood prone might sound like good news, but it is actually terrible news. It is the result of the destruction of what famed naturalist Aldo Leopold described as a "milk and honey wilderness" in his masterwork 
The Sand County Almanac.    
  I will describe in more detail the destruction of this once great waterway in the next few installments of this blog. 

Downtown Yuma

  What is unusual about downtown Yuma is the fact that the major streets run along the edge of downtown, rather than through it. This was not always the case, but, after the city grew away from the river, the traffic was routed to the edges of the commercial core. The western edge of downtown is 4th Avenue, which is presently signed as Interstate 8 Business Loop. It was once U.S. Highway 80, which I have already talked about extensively in this series about Yuma County. The eastern boundary of downtown is Interstate 8, which flies above Old Town Yuma on an unsightly, curving viaduct, basically destroying the historical atmosphere of the area.  The northern boundary of downtown is the Colorado River, which is the border with California. The southern boundary of downtown is less well defined, but I believe it to be 4th Street (not to be confused with 4th Avenue). 4th Street is one block south of Harold Giss Parkway, which is a major east-west arterial in the city. 
  The original "main drag" of Yuma was Main Street. This street is significantly more diminished in stature and importance than it was in the early days of Yuma. It was once one of the widest streets in the United States, so wide a horse and buggy team could turn completely around in the street and still have plenty of room to spare. The street has been narrowed by constructing extremely wide sidewalks along each side with huge planter boxes containing native desert plants. Also, there is angled parking on both sides of Main Street where cars can simply pull in and back out instead of having to parallel park. On my first visit to Yuma, I noticed that the buildings on both sides of Main Street are set a long distance back from the street, suggesting that the street used to be alot wider.  Then, when I saw an old photo of Yuma from the 1800s, that confirmed my suspicion.
  The north end of Main Street used to be at the Colorado River, where it turned into a steamboat landing. Now, it  dead-ends about 100 feet north of 1st Street, about the equivalent of 3 city blocks away from the river.
  Until a few years ago, there was a 2 block street of South Main Street that had been closed off to vehicular traffic and converted into an outdoor pedestrian mall. This stretch ran from 2nd Street, just south of the Yuma County Administration Building, down to Harold Giss Parkway. As with most outdoor pedestrian malls, Main Street Mall was a miserable failure. I walked this pedestrian mall several times and, every time I walked it, I noticed that more and more businesses had closed up. Since the street's re-opening, the area has slowly come back to life. More businesses have opened and people are coming back to the area to shop.