Ann Walker Photo
Who gives a birthday present to a big hole in the ground?
Well, when the hole in the ground is a key part of Yuma’s $3.2 billion agriculture industry and it’s about to celebrate its 100th
birthday, this Colorado River town in the
southwest corner of Arizona does. Te hole is the Yuma Siphon, a massive tunnel under
the Colorado River that’s been delivering irrigation water to the Yuma Valley since June 29, 1912. And the birthday present is a spiffy new exhibit all about the Siphon’s history that the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area is due to unveil in February, just in time for Arizona’s official Centennial. “Of course, statehood was important here, as it was across Arizona. But controlling the river and tapping its
water was what allowed Yuma to grow and prosper over the last century,” said Charles Flynn, the Heritage Area’s executive director. “Te other truly amazing thing is that, one hundred years later, construction and technology from 1912 is still working just as it was designed to, back in the day.”
Te new exhibit is located at the Yuma Quartermaster
Depot State Historic Park, next door to which water still bubbles through the Siphon “full stream ahead” into the Yuma Main Canal. Te U.S. Reclamation Service made its first home in the then-vacant Quartermaster Depot when it launched the Yuma Project in 1904, its first major undertaking in a storied history that transformed the West
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