Pre-Conference Field Trip Guide “Uranium Country” in the Uravan Mineral … Uranium Country... · Telluride Mountain Village and drive one hour west to the Rimrocker Historical

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(Preliminary Field Trip Information)

MINING HISTORY ASSOCIATION Pre-Conference Field Trip Guide

“Uranium Country” in the Uravan Mineral Belt Thursday, June 9, 2016

The trip will be repeated on Sunday, June 12, 2016

This is an all day self driving caravan tour. Start in the morning from the Peaks Hotel in Telluride Mountain Village and drive one hour west to the Rimrocker Historical Museum in Naturita where we meet our guides. From there, we will explore the Uravan Mineral Belt where in 1881 a gold prospector named Tom Talbert found a mysterious yellow ore that was later identified as carnotite. Carnotite is a mineral that contains radium, vanadium, or uranium. However, it was not until the late 1890’s that this area of western Colorado became a prominent player in carnotite mining when Madame Curie’s experiments with radium opened up new markets for carnotite minerals.

The Uranium Country Tour starts at the Peaks Resort and Spa in Mountain Village (Telluride) and proceeds northwest along the San Miguel River to Naturita and then continues to the Uravan area and the Hanging Flume.

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Along the drive to Naturita, we will be traveling down the San Miguel River Canyon shortly after leaving the Telluride Valley. It was in these red rock canyon walls that lie between a junction with Silver Pick Road and the communities of Sawpit and Placerville where some of the earliest carnotite mining was done. Look to the right when we reach Silver Pick Road to see a reclaimed hillside that lies below the red rock cliffs. It was here in 1908 that Vanadium Alloys Company (VAC) began mining radium in the area above Silver Pick Road and built a vanadium and radium processing mill at a site called Newmire. The town sat along the San Miguel River and the mill was situated uphill from the main line of the Rio Grande Southern Railroad. The mines were located further up Silver Pick Road where ore was hauled to the mill by a train of giant bin-like wagons that were pulled by an even bigger tractor.

The bottom station of an aerial tram that carried ore buckets from a radium mine above Sawpit on the San Miguel River still stands as a reminder of the radium-vanadium mining that was once done in the area. (Rudy Davison photo for the Telluride Times, February 8, 1976, p 7)

In 1914, the Primus Chemical Company (PCC) bought out VAC, expanded the mill, and changed the name of the mill community to Vanadium. However, when the mill burned down in 1919, PCC was purchased by the newly formed Vanadium Corporation of America (VCA) and the mill was rebuilt. By the end of 1920 though, ore reserves ran out and VCA moved its mining and milling operations west to Naturita where new deposits of radium, vanadium, and uranium were found. The old mill at Vanadium was abandoned and finally disassembled in the early 1950’s. More recently, remediation of this mill site was completed in 2006. Today, nothing remains to show where the mill or town was located and it has gotten increasingly more difficult to find any sign of mining up Silver Pick Road. During its heyday though, radium produced here was shipped to Madame Curie in France.

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The VCA Mill in Naturita in 1954. (Photo from Uravan, Colorado, One Hundred

Year History, Umetco Minerals Corporation, Grand Junction, CO, 2002, cover page)

A little further down the San Miguel River, we pass through Sawpit. Directly across from the Sawpit Store, Last Dollar Road turns uphill on the right to access former vanadium and radium mines that lay uphill. Again, not much is left to see, but the best relic is the bottom station of an abandoned aerial tram that sits a few hundred yards downriver from the Sawpit Store on the left side of the highway. If you know where to look, you can see where the tram ran to an upper station that is still visible on the cliff above. Continuing down the highway to a T-intersection at Placerville, there is another aerial tram to see if one turned right, but we are turning left to follow the highway to Norwood, Redvale, and Naturita. Once we get to Naturita, our tour to the Uravan Mineral Belt begins. This was a major mining area for radium, vanadium, and uranium from 1910-1984. We start by driving to the east end of Paradox Basin where the Standard Chemical Company (SCC) got things going in 1910. From there, we climb up Long Park that forms the north boundary of Paradox Basin to visit mines that date from SCC to Union Carbide and the atomic age of uranium mining that began with World War II. SCC was organized by Joseph M. Flannery, a former Pittsburgh undertaker that changed careers to become involved with mining vanadium ore for steel production. However, when his sister died from cancer and there was a shortage in the country of radium that was being given to her as a cure, Flannery’s new company began mining for radium and vanadium in the canyon country that lay just west of Naturita. Company headquarters were set up in the east end of Paradox Valley at a site called Coke Ovens. In order to process the carnotite ores that were being mined, the Joe Jr. Mill

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was built along the San Miguel River at a location that eventually became known as Uravan. The coke and ore were transported to the mill by burros, wagons, and trucks. By 1921, SCC was the largest producer of radium in the United States. Again, some of this radium was sent to Madame Curie in France.

Standard Chemical Company’s Coke Ovens camp in the eastern end of

Paradox Basin 1913. (Photo courtesy Rimrocker Historical Society from their book Standard Chemical Company, 2007, page 17)

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These coke ovens in the east end of Paradox Valley supplied fuel to the Joe. Jr. Mill

(Photo courtesy Rimrocker Historical Society from their book Standard Chemical Company, 2007, page 16)

A 1914 photo of Standard Chemical Company’s Joe Jr. Mill located at what

would become Uravan on the San Miguel River. (Photo from Uravan, Colorado, One Hundred Year History,

Umetco Minerals Corporation, Grand Junction, CO, 2002, page 17)

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A pack train of burros carries ore to the Joe Jr. Mill at Uravan around 1920

(Photo from Umetco Minerals Corporation Archives, Uravan, Colorado, One Hundred Year History,

Umetco Minerals Corporation, Grand Junction, CO, 2002, page22)

The final players in this story were the United States Vanadium Company (USV) and Union Carbide Corporation (UCC). To begin, USV built a vanadium recovery mill in Rifle, CO in 1924 and then became interested in acquiring SCC’s Joe Jr. Mill at their San Miguel River site. However, UCC, which had been formed in 1917 by a merger of the Union Carbide Company and National Carbon Company, intervened two years later in 1926 by acquiring USV as a subsidiary company. Still operating as USV though in 1928, it went ahead with the purchase of the Joe Jr. Mill and other mining property from SCC. Then in 1935, USV constructed a new mill at the old SCC site along the San Miguel River and enlarged the company town. During construction, there was a contest to name the new mill and town site. The winning name, “Uravan”, was a contraction of “uranium” and “vanadium”. Until World War II, the Uravan Mill produced vanadium for the steel industry and sent any uranium to the tailings ponds. But it was during the war that uranium became a necessity for the Manhattan Project in its development of an atomic bomb. Thus, the tailings were reworked and the uranium that was recovered was sent off for enrichment. A uranium boom that followed WWII lasted through the 1950’s. After that, uranium mining dwindled until it was again revitalized by the construction of nuclear power plants. However, it was these same nuclear power plants that caused the demise of uranium mining when the Three Mile Island disaster occurred in 1979. At that point, nuclear power was no longer fashionable and the need for uranium essentially vanished. As a result, the Uravan Mill shut in 1984 and became a Superfund site in 1986. Today, reclaimed ground marks the site where the town and mill once stood.

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If there is time, the tour will end with a visit to the historic Hanging Flume Overlook to see a rather dramatic water trough that was fastened to the sheer walls of the Dolores River Canyon. The flume carried water to a gold placer mining operation that failed shortly after the flume was completed.

The Hanging Flume (photo courtesy Rimrocker Historical Society,

2012 Annual News, Edition XIX, page 4)

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ADDITIONAL PHOTOS OF THE TOUR ROUTE

A view from Long Park looking over “Uranium Country” in the

Uravan Mineral Belt (Rudy Davison photo)

An abandoned mine dump on Long Park Mesa that was part of the Bitter Creek claims that date back to uranium mining in the early 1900’s. The wood structure was the winch platform where ore cars were raised or

lowered down an incline into the mine. (Rudy Davison photo)

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Ruins at the Long Park Camp ghost town. During the 1940’s, this was

an active radium mining community that had a semi-professional baseball team. (Rudy Davison photo)

Head frame at the Popcorn uranium mine that operated in the 1970’s.

(Rudy Davison photo)

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An ore chute dropped ore from the Pittsburgh uranium mine down to an ore bin where it was loaded into trucks that took the ore to the mill

at Uravan. (Rudy Davison photo)

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The former town and mill at Uravan once sat on the flat bench of land

directly behind Jane Thompson, President of the Rimrocker Historical Society from Naturita, CO. She holds a photo of what this site looked like when

the mill was operating. (Rudy Davison photo)

The Joe Jr. Mill on 1915 at the site that would become Uravan (photo courtesy Rimrocker Historical Society from their book

Standard Chemical Company, 2007, page 34)

Prepared by Rudy Davison, November 2015