Yuma Territorial Prison

We decided this morning to stay in Wellton another night and make a day trip to Yuma to sight-see. We had visited the Yuma Territorial Prison almost forty years ago before it became a State Historic Park, but thought it would be interesting to see it again. I had only vague memories of most of it, but did remember the Dark Cell and the cells cut into the caliche. Most of the plaster and the roofs are gone, but you can still see the granite and caliche structures with their interior steel strap cages. The prison was abandoned back in the early nineteen hundreds and had a great deal of vandalism until it was resurrected as a park.

This is a picture of our guide (a volunteer from Washington State) as he was using Forry as a stand-in for the warden in a story he was telling us. His tale was of an attempted prison break where the warden was held at knife point by a group of prisoners. The prisoner with the knife in the warden's back was shot by another convict (a convicted murderer) who had grabbed a revolver dropped by one of the would-be escapees. That convict was later pardoned and was quoted as saying that "he was the only person ever sent to prison for murder and then pardoned for committing another murder."

After the tour, we hiked down the hill to the prison cemetery where 104 convicts who died while incarcerated were buried. Some were murdered by fellow prisoners, but a great many died of tuberculosis or consumption. There was one wooden marker in the museum that has survived -- all of the rest have been destroyed or stolen. The close-up of a grave shows yellow linanthus growing between the rocks piled on the cairn.

The City of Yuma has a Cactus Garden on the hillside above the cemetery. I found out there that the odd prickly pear cactus I had a picture of yesterday's blog is aptly named "Beaver Tail Cactus." My flower book says that barrel cacti do not bloom until late summer -- this little one must not have gotten the memo. The columnar cactus is one of over fifty varieties of this genera. It is fascinating to see all of the different kinds. We did see some ocotillo with red flowers on their tips as we came over the pass to Yuma. None of the rest we saw at lower elevations were in bloom and there was nowhere to pull over to get a picture on the pass.

After we left the museum we tried to find the Quechan Tribal Museum on the Fort Yuma grounds. The Quechan Tribe (one of the Colorado River Tribes) now owns the Fort property. They are using a few buildings for their headquarters but the majority of them are in too decrepit a state to be used. The tribe is trying to find grants to restore the Fort -- and their museum. A lady we asked about the museum did tell us that there was a rummage sale going on at the Methodist Mission Church also featuring fry bread. The Catholic Mission was closed except for scheduled masses, but we found the Methodist one. It celebrated its one hundredth birthday five years ago. There were only three Quechen ladies at the rummage sale -- one went to the kitchen and made us fry bread, rolling out her balls of dough while I watched. We ate the bread with honey and powdered sugar (since we had hotdogs at the prison, we opted not to have the bean ones). This lady had the touch! They were the crispist, lightest fry bread I've ever eaten -- and I try them every chance I get!

As we talked with the ladies, we discovered that one of them was going to be 97 years old this year! She had her own teeth, no glasses and walked around quite well. She was a bit hard of hearing and spoke English (the other lady told me that many of the elders did not). She told me she remembers being baptized in this mission church building when she was about 5 years old.

Birds seen today: Yellow Rumped Warbler, Gila Woodpecker, Say's Phoebe