Old Town Yuma

  Yuma, Arizona is a city with more than 100,000 people, but its downtown area is very peaceful. If downtown is the only part of Yuma that a person saw, the person would most likely get the impression that Yuma is a very small town, but that is not the case.  The only traffic lights in downtown Yuma are along the outer edges, 2 intersections on 4th Avenue, one intersection on 
East Harold Giss Parkway and some on North Penitentiary Avenue and these traffic lights control traffic flow across a one way bridge.  I will write about that bridge soon. It is one of the oldest automobile bridges in the western part of the United States. For the most part, traffic is very light in  downtown Yuma and the streets are narrow. There are alot of adobe buildings. The entire town of Yuma was completely built out of adobe in the early years, but the adobe buildings would melt away during floods, since the town was located at the confluence of two rivers. The principal street of Yuma in the town's early years was Main Street. Main Street is still the heart of downtown Yuma, but is no longer the city's primary business street. In the early days of Yuma, Main Street was one of the widest streets in the United States. It was so wide that a team of horses pulling a buggy could turn completely around in the street. The street remained this wide through the early days of the automobile, but eventually, the growth in Yuma shifted away from downtown and, in 1969, a two block stretch of South Main Street was closed and turned into a pedestrian mall. It was thought at the time that eliminating vehicles from the street and allowing people to visit the stores without having to watch for traffic would revitalize the downtown area, but, as in most cases around the country, this pedestrian mall failed miserably.  
The two block stretch of South Main Street between Second Street and Harold Giss Parkway was reopened to motorized traffic in 2002. I remember seeing South Main Street when it was a pedestrian mall. Most of the businesses had closed and the former street was lined with vacant storefronts. There were very few people walking around the area visiting the few businesses that were still open.  Reopening the street to cars has brought the street back to life and nearly every business has reopened and people have returned to downtown Yuma. While the downtown area is coming back to life, it is still not as busy as other parts of the city. One look at Main Street in Yuma, either in person or on an aerial map, will reveal how wide the street once was. Today the street is lined with extremely wide sidewalks, grassy strips in front of the stores and large concrete boxes that are filled with desert plants or trees. In addition, there is angled parking on both sides of the street. Main Street has been reduced to a single lane of traffic each direction and that is all it needs, since the majority of the city has spread southward and westward from here.