Biography[]
Yuma Flats was a small but peaceful makeshift town located near the desert. The town was only accessed by one road leading from the highway route through the hills to the village, making the location somewhat unheard of by most but still officially listed as a legitimate community. Because it was really just a tiny place within the hills, tourists probably rarely entered, making the townsfolk rely on farming and growing for a living. For the most part, Yuma Flats was a nice location to settle in for a normal and simple life.
One of Yuma Flat's most notable residents was Karen Sawney Bean, who lived happily with her equally notable husband Dan and young son around 10 years old.
During the 1940's, the country was entering the "nuclear age" where the government started splitting atoms for weapons and needed land to properly test the bombs. New Mexico was one of their first choices because of its vast desert land and started marking reserved locations for tests. The government soon found a large area of flat land within the hills that contained Yuma Flats and they immediately desired it.
The U.S. Army was sent in to notify the town people that they desire the town for dangerous nuclear testing and the people must evacuate, with the Army offering to pay handsomely for their homes. Karen and her husband resisted the offer and the whole plan itself, rallying the rest of the town to do the same, stating that it is their home and as Americans they can't be forced out of their homes. The Army soon left, frustrated.
That night, the soldiers got very drunk at a roadside bar and go back to Yuma Flats with their rifles to "renegotiate" the problem. They first go to Karen's house and drag them from sleep onto the the road with no one else seeing it. The leader of the men, Lieutenant-General Ryan starts brutally beating Dan for fun, making his son and wife watch. Ryan finally leaves Dan alone and shoves his gun in their son's face, laughing hysterically at the boy crying. They start saying that because they are the military they have the right to kill their son and not get in any trouble. Ryan states that them and the rest of the "pig farmers" need to leave Yuma Flats before they are forced out. Dan springs up to either talk to him or attack him and the surprised Ryan shoots him out of accident and instinct. Knowing the neighbors heard the shot, the men leave after Ryan threatens the widow Karen and her wrecked son. The neighbors come out and see the soldiers leave, Karen angrily watching the men leave.
The next day the evil men and more enter the town again to naturally negotiate the evacuation but Karen leads the townfolk against a sniper attack on the Army, successfully forcing them out of town.
The retreated soldiers soon let rage and revenge overcome them and decided to invade the town and destroy every building they see, killing those who stay and forcing the scared to flee from the village.
They invade with tanks the next day and immediately start shooting at the houses and shops, killing many and pushing many to run for the hills. The men kill every animal they see, some soldiers even seem to find it thrilling. Ryan found Karen and her son hiding in a house and lets his rage loose. He sadistically states how proud and happy he is about killing Dan and tells them that no one cares about them or the "shithole" town and the public won't even find out about the destruction of Yuma Flats as the bombs are scheduled to drop there. He murders her son and happily beats Karen without marcy and attempts to rape her before his superior officer arrives and restrains him, berating him for killing a mother's child. He lets Karen go and gives her his sympathy and promises to have Ryan court-martialed. Karen leaves with her son's body and Ryan's dog tags.
With the actual town being gone, the Yuma Flats was known as Sector 16 by the government and many atomic bombs were being tested there, contaminating every living thing within 1,000 miles. What the army didn't know was that the survivors of Yuma Flats hid in the nearby caves, where they were exposed heavily to radiation.
Small testing villages were set up in and around Yuma Flats and bunking houses and civilian homes were settled there within the years.The cave dwellers had finally gone completely insane and fully mutated, they began attacking the civilians and the army once more, taking back their home and residing there, attacking people that would happen to stumble upon the area and eating them.
A military base was set up a few miles way from the former town where one of the two clans of mutants.
Place in films[]
The Hills Have Eyes (2006)[]
The next morning after the Carter and Bukowski family were slaughtered by mutants, Doug ventured through the desert to find his kidnapped daughter, finding her in one of the nuclear testing villages, which is where the mutants were living. When Doug passed through an old mining cave to shortcut through the hills, he finds Karen's grave.
The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007)[]
The film is set almost entirely in Yuma Flats, taking place at the Army base outside of the villages and in the mines below the base. It was at the beginning of the film that the remaining mutants from the villages migrated to the mines under the base and killed the soldiers above ground.