Wednesday – December 03, 2014
Yuma – Interesting Facts
Yuma, Arizona
Yuma is located in Arizona’s southwest corner, sharing borders with Mexico and California.
Yuma is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the sunniest place on earth with 339 bright days a year (about 91 percent of all daytime hours) and less than 3 inches of rain annually.
Yuma is the driest and least humid city in the U.S. – but not the hottest!
Yuma (and all of Arizona) is in the Mountain time zone and does not observe daylight savings time. During the winter months, it’s an hour earlier across the Colorado River in California.
Yuma has been known as Colorado City, Arizona City and finally as Yuma by decree of the Territorial Legislature in 1873.
The Yumas were a combination of Indian tribes of the lower Colorado Region – the Quechans, Cocopahs and Mohaves.
Between 1850 and 1877 Yuma was a bustling river town. The Colorado River was navigable from the Gulf of California to the mouth of the Grand Canyon.
Over 65 movies have been filmed in or around Yuma since 1913 including Star Wars, Jarhead and Resident Evil: Extinction.
Yuma is Arizona’s 11th largest city with a population of 92,000, and the biggest population center outside metro Phoenix and Tucson.
Yuma’s largest industry is agriculture, followed by the military and tourism. With the arrival of sun-seeking snowbirds in the fall, Yuma’s population nearly doubles.
Yuma’s climate of sunshine, rich soil and water combine to produce more than 175 different crops – including more than 90 percent of the nation’s leafy greens from November through March.
Yuma’s ideal growing conditions promote the growth of towering Medjool date palms, producing a healthy harvest of up to 10 million pounds of dates a year. Yuma Medjools are shipped around the world, even to the Middle East!
And finally… Yuma folklore says there are several caches of gold, silver and treasure buried beneath the desert sands. They include millions of dollars of Nazi Germany war treasure, tons of silver and gold from the Spanish galleons the "Content" and the "Isabella Catolica", and missing crates of 1903 Winchester 30-30 carbines.
Tomorrow another adventure begins.
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