Posts Tagged ‘Yuma’

Major General Leonard Wood, chief of staff of the United States army, gave the command . . . The first automobile in the desperate San Diego-Phoenix race shot forward with a bound. –San Diego Union, Oct. 27, 1912.

In the fall of 1912, San Diego challenged Los Angeles to a road race across the desert to Arizona. The story of The Great Race. 

Ed Fletcher behind the wheel of his 20 hp Franklin “race car.” Special Collections, University of California, San Diego.

Warning: Avoid the plank road. A public warning was issued yesterday by the El Centro branch of the auto club of southern California that travel to Yuma via the plank road is dangerous. . . Parties attempting to travel suffer from thirst and hunger and are sometimes in danger of death as there is little chance of succor arriving unless a call for aid reaches Holtville or Yuma. –Imperial Valley Press, April 29, 1919.

The story of San Diego’s wooden road across the sand dunes: the Plank Road.

When I was at San Diego, a great many complaints were made by citizens there, and persons arriving from the Gila, of a gang of lawless men who had established a ferry over the Colorado, where not only they practised the greatest extortions, but committed murders and robberies . . .

Read about the Glanton gang at the Yuma Crossing: The Scalp Hunters.

The Yuma crossing