Yuma Crossing
Immediately after the Mexican–American War in 1848, the U.S. Army built Fort Yuma here to protect travelers from Indians raiding the area. It was the center point of conflict in the Yuma War of 1850–53. From 1864–1890, the fort and nearby facilities was the main army base to support the US Army's efforts to control the Indians throughout the greater southwest.
Spanish–American War
The war lasted ten weeks. John Hay (the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom), writing from London to his friend Theodore Roosevelt, declared that it had been "a splendid little war". The press showed Northerners and Southerners, blacks and whites fighting against a common foe, helping to ease the scars left from the American Civil War. Exemplary of this was the fact that four former Confederate States Army generals had served in the war, now in the U.S. Army and all of them again carrying similar ranks. These officers included Matthew Butler, Fitzhugh Lee, Thomas L. Rosser and Joseph Wheeler, though only the latter had seen action. Still, in an exciting moment during the Battle of Las Guasimas, Wheeler apparently forgot for a moment which war he was fighting, having supposedly called out "Let's go, boys! We've got the damn Yankees on the run again!"