Yuma took its name from a teamster who died while working on the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and was buried beside the tracks. He never saw the town, which rose in 1886 as a cattle and shipping center. As homesteaders fenced the range and dry summers through the 1890s thinned the herds, Yuma had evolved into a farming community by 1900. It prospered during the World War One years, aided by ample rainfall and high demand for grain, but struggled through the Great Depression, surviving on just enough good harvests. Better irrigation techniques later put local farmers on a more stable footing, and Yuma became the anchor of one of Colorado's richest agricultural regions. By the early 1990s, Yuma County ranked among the nation's leaders in corn production. Farmers in this area sought ways to manage scarce rainfall after settlement in the 1880s. Some adopted Hardy Webster Campbell's scientific moisture-management methods, introduced in 1902, while others conserved moisture through summer fallowing, leaving a field unplanted one year and cultivating it the next. The area's first irrigation wells were dug in the early 1950s, and small-scale sprinkler systems watered the fields. Later, pivot sprinklers replaced most other methods, conserving both labor and water and reducing the water needed for irrigation from 1,500 gallons per minute to less than 700. Over time, area farmers used resourceful methods to overcome the West's aridity and raise harvests from land once deemed barren.