Colorado River State Historic Park

For nearly 20 years beginning in 1864, all the military posts in the Southwest traced their lifelines to the Yuma Quartermaster Depot.Here on the high ground above the Colorado River, the U.S. Army's warehouses held a six-month supply of clothing, food, ammunition and other goods for forts in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Texas - and were surrounded by as many as 900 mules and their teamsters.Ocean vessels brought goods to the Gulf of California, where they were loaded onto steamboats for the trip upriver to Yuma. Supplies were unloaded here, then shipped farther upriver or overland in wagons pulled by the 20-mule teams of Western lore.With the coming of the railroad in 1877, the Depot's supply role faded and the Army closed it in 1883. But the site lived on as a telegraph and weather station, customs office - and the first home of the Bureau of Reclamation (then U.S. Reclamation Service) and the Yuma County Water Users Association.This beautiful 10-acre park includes five buildings dating back to the Depot's earliest days - some of Arizona's oldest and best-preserved buildings. Other exhibits describe the amazing engineering feats that brought irrigation water to the Yuma Valley - under the Colorado River - in 1912. For a preview, download the Quartermaster Depot "History Walk" brochure here.