Yuma Crossing

Yuma Crossing is a site in Arizona and California that is significant for its association with transportation and communication across the Colorado River. It connected New Spain and Las Californias in the Spanish Colonial period in and also during the Western expansion of the United States. Features of the Arizona side include the Yuma Quartermaster Depot and Yuma Territorial Prison. Features on the California Side include Fort Yuma, which protected the area from 1850 to 1885.HistoryThe history of the Yuma Crossing began at the formation of two massive granite outcroppings on the Colorado River. The narrowing of the river provided the only crossing point for a thousand miles, thus making it a focal point for the Patayan tribes, and later the Quechan.In 1540, well before the British Europeans touched Plymouth Rock in 1620, Yuma’s European history began here with the arrival of Spanish explorer Hernando de Alarcon. It was not until after the 17th and 18th century explorations of the padres Kino and Garcés that the crossing came to be used by the Spanish expeditions of Anza and others along this route from 1774. This route, sometimes called the Sonora Road, ran from the Spanish Tubac Presidio, in Sonora to Alta California. An attempt to establish missions and colonize the area of the crossing was made by the Spanish soon after but it failed, when the formerly friendly Quechan were angered to the point of a violent revolt that ended the missions, the colony and the use of the land route until the 19th century. Mexican expeditions mollified the Quechan and persuaded them to allow the use of the crossings, reopening the Sonora Road to Alta California from the later 1820's.