Ram Pasture and Wallpaper: A Story of the Uranium Boom in the Colorado Plateau (1955)

1955of Pacific Coast Geographers27 RAM PASTURE AND WALLPAPER: A Story of the Uranium Boom in the Colorado Plateau Elbert E. Miller University of Utah The New Boom The most spectacular growth to hit the Colorado Plateau since its sparse settlement in the 1860's and 70's is the one which is now taking place. Everywhere one sees evidences of this expansion and a grab for quick wealth. The hundreds of mobile homes, tents, shacks, and even a number of new, substantial houses, the mushrooming towns, with their dozens of new businesses to serve the public, the new road system stretching across the rugged terrain like an ever-growing octopus, these are the readily observable aspects of the development. But there are numerous other, less observable, aspects of the boom. First, it should be noted that the mining of uranium in the Colorado Plateau is not a recent development. A few years before World War 1, about 1911*, uranium mining began, to supply contracts with Rare Metals Company and Standard Chemical Company. The companies were supplying uranium and radium for experimentation and medicinal use to doctors and laboratories in eastern United States and in Europe There are stories, probably false, among the old-timers on the Plateau that Madame Curie received rare metals for her experiments from the vicinity of Naturita, Colorado. Other stories place the source at Moab or Hite, Utah. Stories indicate that uranium mining was begun in the vicinity of Naturita and later spread to other areas. The ore was packed on mules to the roads and freighted out on wagons. With the fulfillment of a contract, mining would cease until another contract could be obtained, sometimes a period of a year or two. Naturita, Uravan, and other towns associated primarily with mining thus went through half a dozen or more periods of boom and bust previous to the Depression of the 'Thirties.' In 1929, for example, Naturita had only 30 inhabitants and post office cancellations were frequently less than 15 cents per day. Last year receipts were over $8000. In 1930 the ?Because of the nature of this paper, no formalized footnotes are included. Personal observations, interviews, The Wall Street Journal, and Salt Lake Tribune are major sources. 28 Yearbook of The Association Vol. 17 SALT LAKE CITY GRAND JUNCTION MARYSVALE MONTICELLO A NATURITA O DENVER THE COLORADO PLATEAU URANIUM AREA tmtrt tm·' GALLUP A O SANTA FE Fig 1. The Uranium Producing Area of the Colorado Plateau. 1955of Pacific Coast Geographers29 Naturita mill opened to process vanadium ore with radium and uranium as the not-too-valuable by-products, even as gasoline was not very valuable in the early period of petroleum refining. Population and employment were a little more stable at Uravan where a small mill was built in 1912. In 1919 this mill was sold to U. S. Vanadium Corporation, enlarged to 50 tons per day capacity, and changed to a wet-process mill. These mills only concentrated the rare metal content. The concentrates were then shipped to Cannonsburg , Pennsylvania, for further refining. Emphasis was on vanadium until World War II. With the greater demand for minerals to develop the Atomic Bomb, in 1942 the Federal Government built a housing project for about a hundred families between the towns of Naturita and Uravan Population and employment were more stable in the other towns of the Plateau during this early period, since they were almost entirely dependent upon subsistence farming and/or cattle and sheep ranching. Thus the influx or departure of a few dozen miners had little effect upon the economy. At Marysvale, on the western edge of the Plateau, is the nation's only lode mine for fissionable materials. Several ores of radioactive minerals, such as uraninite and autunite, plus the more common lead, zinc, silver, gold, and alunite have been mined at various times. Though Marysvale is somewhat in the doldrums today, depletion of ores is not responsible but rather the cheaper cost and great volume of fissionable materials from the main portion of the Plateau. Today, population growth is one of the most noticeable items within the 107,000 square miles of the Plateau. A rush as big as the...