Visiting Yuma, United States: Top Sights on Foot

Looking for things to do in Yuma? This southwestern Arizona city grew around a crucial crossing of the Colorado River, where Indigenous communities, explorers, soldiers, pioneers, traders and agricultural workers passed through. Its historic bridges, prison ruins, churches and riverfront depot reveal how Yuma became a crossroads in the American Southwest. Neywo also has a free audio guide for Yuma with five narrated places.

What to See in Yuma

The best way to explore Yuma is to follow the places that tell its story, from the river and its military supply network to the buildings that preserve the city’s architectural heritage.

Yuma Quartermaster Depot State Historic Park

Yuma Quartermaster Depot State Historic Park stands within the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Yuma Crossing and Associated Sites. In the 1870s, the site served as a major supply hub for the U.S. Army.

Steamboats travelled up the Colorado River from the Gulf of California carrying food, ammunition and equipment. These supplies were stored in large adobe warehouses before being sent onward by wagons and mule trains to frontier forts in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and beyond. The depot helps explain why the river crossing was so important to the wider Southwest.

Ocean-to-Ocean Bridge on Penitentiary Avenue

The Ocean-to-Ocean Bridge is one of Yuma’s defining engineering landmarks. Opened in 1915, it was the first highway crossing of the lower Colorado River and the earliest through truss bridge in Arizona. It is also the state’s only Pennsylvania truss bridge, recognizable by its subdivided, lattice-like panels.

For decades, the bridge carried the transcontinental Ocean-to-Ocean Highway and later U.S. Route 80. A new bridge took over traffic in 1956. After the older bridge deteriorated, it was closed to vehicles by the late 1980s and used only by pedestrians and cyclists for thirteen years. Restoration followed, and it reopened to traffic in 2002 after a re-dedication ceremony involving the Quechan Nation and the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area.

Methodist Episcopal Church

Built in 1905, the historic Methodist Episcopal Church is a Mission Revival landmark with stucco walls and curved parapets inspired by the Spanish colonial missions of the Southwest. It served its original Methodist congregation for decades before becoming the home of the Christian Science Society of Yuma in 1946.

The building now functions as an event venue. Its place in Yuma’s history was formally recognized in 1982, when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Yuma Territorial Prison

Yuma Territorial Prison sits on a bluff overlooking the Colorado River. The prison opened on July 1, 1876, and operated for thirty-three years, holding more than three thousand prisoners, including twenty-nine women. Its harsh conditions helped give it the nickname “Hellhole of the West.”

The surviving site includes the original guard tower, the main gate and the cell block. The prison was built continuously by its inmates, who quarried the stone, prepared the mortar and laid the blocks themselves. The result is a place where the architecture and the prison’s history are inseparable: the prisoners constructed the walls that confined them.

The ruins also show how the prison occupied the landscape above the river, creating a powerful connection between Yuma’s natural setting and its territorial past.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church has stood on 2nd Avenue since 1909. Although it began as a neighborhood church, it now serves as a cultural center.

Its architecture makes it especially distinctive. St. Paul’s is the only institutional building in Yuma designed in the Shingle Style and its related Western Stick Style—architectural approaches more commonly used for houses than churches. A broad shingled roof, rusticated stone base and detailed wood framing around the porch give it a handcrafted, residential character.

The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, recognizing its unusual contribution to Arizona’s architectural heritage.

Exploring Yuma and Arizona

Yuma’s historic sites make it a natural starting point for discovering the wider state. For more ideas, explore Arizona and the United States. If your itinerary continues through the region, Neywo also covers cities including Tucson, Tombstone and Phoenix.

Explore Yuma with Neywo

Neywo offers one walking tour and one bike route in Yuma, with five narrated places across the walking tour and two stops on the bike route.

• Walking tour: 3.12 km, 70 minutes, five stops
• Bike route: 0.8 km, four minutes, two stops

The walking route, “Hellhole of the West: Yuma’s Crossing,” includes Yuma Territorial Prison, Penitentiary Avenue, Yuma Quartermaster Depot State Historic Park, Methodist Episcopal Church and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The bike route crosses the Colorado River between Penitentiary Avenue and the depot.

Download the free Neywo app and explore Yuma at your own pace. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, with narration available in 11 languages—no group and no schedule.