Yuma, AZ (YUM)

Ticket Revenue

FY 2011

$292,505

Station Ridership

FY 2011

3,386

Note: Fiscal year is from
October through September.

The Amtrak stop in downtown Yuma consists of a platform waiting area adjacent to the site of the old Southern Pacific Railway passenger station. A Union Pacific building provides a small waiting area and restrooms at train arrival and departure times. The station building is also a crew change point. When Amtrak took over passenger service in 1971, the original station became home to the Yuma Fine Arts Museum. Designed in 1926 by architects Ceril H. Wakefield and A.L. Arguello, the building was conceived in the then popular Spanish Revival style, with a hipped red tile roof and expansive wrap around porches that overlooked the tracks. In 1976, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Unfortunately, a devastating 1995 fire gutted the structure and the remains had to be razed.

Yuma lies at a strategic point in the Sonoran Desert on the Colorado River, the border between Arizona and California. Here below its confluence with the Gila River, the mighty Colorado broadens and slows, providing a prime spot at which to cross it. In 1540, Spanish explorer Hernando de Alarcon visited the area on his search for the legendary Seven Cities of Gold, and encountered the native Yuma Indians. In 1850, Ft. Yuma was established on the California bank of the Colorado River, and present day Yuma developed on the opposite bank, then part of Mexico. The town became a bustling crossing point for settlers heading for California by land.

In 1854, through the Gadsden Purchase, southern Arizona became part of the United States. The town grew into a busy port, as supply ships from California would sail around Baja to the mouth of the Colorado River where it meets the Sea of Cortez. From there steamboats would transfer supplies upstream to Yuma, which was by that time site of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Supply Depot, which stocked military depots throughout the southwestern United States. With the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1877 and its first of many bridges across the river, the steamboat era came to an end. The Arizona Territorial Prison was established at Yuma in 1876, and its adobe and rock buildings can be visited today as a museum. In later years, the town became an agricultural hub, as the Colorado River was dammed, providing irrigation for various crops.

Today Yuma is best known for its proximity to numerous wildlife refuge and wilderness areas, as well as the fact that the Guinness Book of World Records declared it the sunniest place on earth—the sun shines about 90 percent of the year. The clear skies also attracted the U.S. armed forces; Marine Corps Air Station Yuma is famous for its annual air show.

Amtrak does not provide ticketing or baggage service at this station.

Yuma is served by tri-weekly train service.