The Morris County chronicle. [volume] (Morristown, N.J.) 1877-1915, 1898-11-04
1t Is Yuma in Southwestern
Arizona and 1t Easily
Holds the Record.
WHERE OLD SOL REIGNS.
Topfet Is Popularity Supposed to be
Frosty When Compared to This
Quaint Old Town.

Times Year.
The people who flee to the mountains
and seashore during the summer days
as if before pestilence, when what
they know as the heated term is on,
can have no idea what hot weather
really is until they have spent few
days in Yuma, on the Colorado river, in
southwestern Arizona. The people who
tell agonizing tales of their suffering
in the periods of temperature among
the nineties in the great cities ought
to come out here to know better what
Old Sol can do in the way of heat
making when he gets really down to
business. What would you say to liv-
ing in spot where not blade of grass
may be seen, where there is nothing
green but few trees shimmering in
the dusty sunshine, where the earth
everywhere is so hot that one cannot
stand upon it with bare feet, and
where, from June 1 to early October, the
temperature is seldom below 80 de-
grees, and more generally about the
10th degree mark-once in while
Iuuu1uS up " 1AO dAQ LIZ OO5A COoS
What would you think of tempera-
ture for full month not less than 81
degrees, of two weeks at a time vary
ing from 108 to 115 degrees, and even
a week at time over 112 degrees in
the shade? That is what the residents
of this quaint old town of Yuma have
regularly each summer.
Yuma has been the banner hot town
of America for forty or fifty years.
That ancient, palsied and weather.
beaten story about the soldier who
lived and died in the garrison at Yuma,
and whose ghost came back one night
for his army blankets, for use down in
chilly, frosty hell, has gone far and
wide throughout the world, and has
given a certain characteristic to the
fame of the town. In the forties and
ffties the army garrison at Yuma was
famous among Uncle Sans soldiers as
the most dreaded post on the frontier,
and the letters and diaries of such mil
itary men as Generals Albert Sidney
Johnston, Edward F. Beale and Kear-
ny, who served their military appren-
ticeship there, are plentiful with COM
ments on the terrific hot weather of
Fort Yuma in the summer months
while they served there.
All conditions seem to unite in max
ing Yuma the hot summer spot it is.
It is located in a low basin-like locality
on the edge of the lazy, muddy Colora-
do river, as it meanders through desert
sands and adobe soil down to the Gulf
of California. Away to the west, across
the river, and to the south stretches
the Colorado desert, several thousand
square miles in area. 1t is so merciless
CHASTITY and fierce desert waste that
no one dares cross it by wagon or on
foot in the summer months, and never
in winter or early spring, unless ac-
companied by companion or two and
fitted out with an abundance of drink
ing water and food. Every summer
there are venturesome miners who lay
down their lives in trying to cross
those deserts, because they are over
taken by sandstone, or are weakened
unto death by the dreadful heat.
Rain falls in Yuma and the region
roundabout four or five times in a
year, and then only in the early winter
months. There are, however, some
very heavy floods here in the months
of February and March, when the wa
ter in the Colorado river rises and
overfiows its banks because of the
melting SHOWS away up in the noun
tains of Colorado and Northern Ari-
IONA and the heavy rains in Southern
California. When the water recedes it
leaves some thousands of acres or rich
bottom lands along the sides of the
river, an area of ailuvial mud, where
the Indians plant their mesquite beans
and melon seeds for their annual crops,
the same as the Egyptians make their
annual planting along the banks of the
Nile when the foods are past. The
fertility of these bottom lands has at
tracted attention, and in recent years
enterprising Yankees have taken up
hundreds of acres of this soil, and are
growing to a small extent fruits and
melons, which are first in the market
even in semi-tropical Southern Cali
fornia and Los Angeles. The town of
Yuma has population of three thou
sand About half of these are Ameri-
cans from Eastern States, and the rest
are Mexicans.
A large part of the buildings here are
adobe-that is, built of adobe mud
bricks. They have walls from two to
three feet thick, and are one story
high. At night every one sleeps out
of doors. Many sleep there through
ten months in the year. In midsum-
mer no one can well endure the heat
and closeness of any apartment. The
sight that one has as he gazes from a
two-story building or some eminence
in the place early in the morning in
summer across the old town would be
long remembered by any one not ac-