A Quartermaster is the person responsible for supplying the military with all their goods. Back in 1864, when Arizona was still a territory, a Quartermaster Depot was established in Yuma. The site is now a State Historic Park and we spent the afternoon there today.
The building on the left in the above photo is the place where goods were stored. Behind it is the Colorado River. The goods came upriver by steamship and left by wagons. The building on the right was the Quartermaster’s Office. It also housed a telegraph office and a weather station.
Above is where the Quartermaster, his wife, and their daughter lived. In the main house, there’s a breezeway through the middle with the parlor and dining room on one side and two bedrooms on the other. Each of those four rooms is, I would guess, about 10 feet square and each has a fireplace across one corner. The smaller building to the right and in front of it housed the kitchen and laundry and the soldier who provided those services for the family. A veranda connects the two but there’s enough space to allow any breezes from the river to help keep the kitchen heat away from the main house.
Up to 900 mules were quartered here at any one time. The teamsters who handled them lived in small rooms behind the building below.
In the twentieth century, many other organizations have had offices here. Those offices now host displays about water and various attempt to manage it over the years. Here’s some of the items in those displays.
The Yuma Quartermaster Depot Historic State Park is still under development. If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend spending some time here learning lots of interesting stuff.
TTYL,
Linda