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Yuma Open Air Museum – Arizona
Yuma Open Air Museum is one of those interesting and hidden places, about which you never hear much. It is in the middle of nowhere, people don’t talk about it much and it is made somewhat irrelevant for many. That shouldn’t fool you though. This place has a lot for armor fans and modelers, despite not being in the spotlight. It is somewhat an Oasis in the desert. Without palms and water, but with heavy metal armored vehicles instead.
It is located in the middle of the desert, in the state of Arizona, close to California. Close to Yuma. We will leave it at that, so you can do your due diligence and look for it in Google. Hopefully, that will make it a little more popular, at least in the search engine. It is actually easy one to get to, but it is not one that you hear much about.
Despite that, as you can see from the pictures here, there are nice exhibits, maintained in very good condition. Now it is not clear which helps more for that – is it the weather in Arizona, or it is whoever take care of them, but it is probably a little bit of both. Armor vehicles are placed on round concrete pads, which are all over the place and most of them are taken. The empty ones hint that there will be more to come, hopefully in the near future.
This is not a huge place, nor it features a lot of exhibits, like some of the other armor museums that we’ve described here on this blog. However, this is one of the coolest ones we’ve been to. Because it is not only about the number of armor pieces shown, but also the arrangement, the maintenance and most importantly the atmosphere of the place.
Yuma Open Air Museum is definitely one with atmosphere. At first, we’ve thought, that it is an Air Museum, but it is an armored one. Excluding one Cobra helicopter placed on a pylon close by. Right next to the entrance of the military facility in the vicinity of the museum grounds. With that said, still it was a pleasant surprise.
We know that for some of our readers, Arizona is far from home, but still many visit California often. And if you are an armor fan, a modeler or just a museum lover, well, this place is located at an acceptable drive distance from Los Angeles and Sand Diego. Even from Las Vegas, Nevada. All of those mentioned – often visited by tourists abroad. So our suggestion: if you like armor, you are OK with driving, do your research and pay a visit to this place. It is an open air museum, you just park and visit. The weather is good almost all of the time, and the exhibits, well, you can judge from the pictures.
For those of you who can’t go that far, well, check out the link here. We’ve made a walkaround of the Sherman, since we thought that this is the most interesting exhibit for the modeling fans. It is not nearly enough to cover what you can see in the Yuma Open Air Museum, but at least will give you some hint and hopefully – some help while modeling the M4 tank.
