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Show ME Re "MY OLD MAN:" The Uranium King...Part 2 The author debunks a few tall tales and tells what really happened in 1952. At the beginning of my first article in The Zephyr about my father, Charlie Steen, and his discovery of the Mi Vida mine and its consequences, I wrote that people couldn’t seem to resist the impulse to distort and rewrite the history of Moab's most famous prospector. I pointed out that falsehoods about my father's uranium discovery and his role in the Uranium Boom were now finding their way into print in historical publications. Potato Chips & Barston: Two good bad examples of people cupaee the truth or concocting half-truths about my father’s role in changing the course of the uranium industry clearly illustrate this point. In Utah’s official centennial history, Utah: The Right Place, by Dr. Thomas G. Alexander, the author has Charlie Steen feeding his family on "potato chips and bananas" while he searched for uranium "with a Geiger counter under one arm and a bundle of Geological Surveys under the other.” Aside from the well-known fact that my father couldn’t afford a Geiger counter were paid out of escrow prior to the purchase by Atlas Minerals. Atlas continued to mine ore from some of the claims my father had originally staked in 1951 and 1952 for another twenty years. It was Atlas Minerals that got into the dispute with San Juan County and the State of Utah during the mid-1970s about taxes and walked away-—-not Charlie Steen. So if you prefer to believe the last thing you heard from someone who wishes it had happened differently, don’t bother the old miner at the end of the bar; just pick _up a copy of some historical publication and read his faulty recollections. It will save you the money you would otherwise waste buying him drinks, and you will have a permanent record of another patently false account of someone’s version of Charlie Steen’s career. Having set the record straight, I’ll now resume the history of my father’s discovery that I grew up with and believe to be the truth. The next couple of months after my father’s discovery overflowed with excitement and activity. On the basis of my father’s conviction that he had hit the uranium jackpot, my mother borrowed some more money from her sister’s husband and Buddy Cowger extended my father’s line of credit for gasoline and groceries. My Dad wisely figured that the 11 claims he had staked were not enough to protect his interest; so he returned to Lisbon Valley and began staking additional claims to cover more ground. How many people really believe that a prospector, much less a family with four young and hungry sons, could have sustained themselves on a diet of potato chips and bananas? Charlie 6 Butch and the company plane. and the lack of printed geological information about the Big Indian area prior to the Uranium Boom, Dr. Alexander, who has three university degrees in history, actually seems to think that six people could live for more than two years on potato chips and bananas! I wonder what level of sobriety the old timer who spun that yarn was in when that tale was told? How many people really believe that a prospector, much less a family with four young and hungry sons, could have sustained themselves on a diet of potato chips and bananas? A thoughtful, careful author might have also asked himself just how many grocery stores in Cisco, Utah carried bananas in their fresh produce section in 1951. In a book that purports to be Utah’s definitive history, the Steens’ diet has been transformed from venison and beans into a snack food and a tropical fruit that would have been considered an exotic rarity in the forlorn town of Cisco, Utah. - The Infamous Tax Bill Perhaps the most egregious, recent example of a historical publication distorting the truth about the consequences of the discovery of the Mi Vida mine is the latest issue of Blue Mountain Shadows: The Magazine of San Juan County History. Dr. Gary L. Shumway was the Guest Editor of this issue and a previous issue that focused on uranium mining in San Juan County. Dr. Shumway should be imminently qualified to edit a historical publication devoted to uranium mining, since he is a member of the extended Shumway family who were engaged in prospecting and mining uranium for six decades. Dr. Shumway also has three degrees in history. He obtained two of those degrees by studying and writing about the Uranium Indust In the latest issue of Blue Mountain Shadows that Dr. Shumway edited is an article The first problem he had to deal with was the location of the Big Buck claims that he had tied on to when he first staked his ground in 1951. The original locators of the Big Buck claims had not bothered to set their posts more than 80 feet past the rim of the escarpment overlooking Big Indian Wash. But-the Certificates of Location on file in the San Juan County Recorder's office claimed several hundred feet of additional ground back towards the Mi Vida discovery drill hole. Working with Dan Hayes, my father and Douglas Hoot reset the corners for the Big Buck claim group and relocated the 11 original Mi Vida claims. Amended Certificates of Location for all of the Big Buck and Mi Vida claims were filed in Monticello, and everyone agreed to respect the new claim boundaries. This may not seem too important to someone uninitiated in the ways of prospecting and unfamiliar with the things an attorney can do with the mining laws, but this decision was to have far-reaching consequences when these same claims were jumped less than a year later. My father staked another 30 claims during this period, including six that he located in Douglas Hoot’s name and three for Buddy Cowger. He helped Hawley Seeley stake three more to repay the Seeley family for their friendship and kindness when we lived on Yellow Cat and in Cisco. Bob Barrett was let in on the discovery, and he came up from Dove Creek and located 11 claims to the west of the expanded claim block. Later, my father and Barrett staked 16 more claims that extended for nearly another mile and a half to the north; with my father and Barrett locating every other claim in sequence so they both ended up with eight claims each. Things began to get complicated when Bill McCormick had to withdraw from their handshake mining partnership. It turned out that McCormick had a silent partner in the Dove Creek Mercantile Store, and his associate didn’t want anymore of their good money thrown into the expensive exploration drilling that would be needed to prove ‘up an.ore body. He demanded that McCormick recover their investment before Charlie Steen spent all of their money pursuing his dream of striking it rich. Bill McCormick was so cash strapped himself that he couldn’t come up with the $7,500 his of reminiscences by John Black, a uranium miner who worked with the Shumways for silent partner wanted, so he offered to sell back their 49% interest for $15,000. many Then Douglas Hoot, the machinist my grandmother had brought up from Texas to rebuild the rig and help with the drilling, decided that he wanted to return to Houston. Hoot said he would sell his six claims for $100 to the first person that wanted them. My father was flabbergasted. These claims had been staked close in to the Mi Vida claim group, and were each potentially worth a thousand times the years in various mines in San Juan County. In Mr. Black’s rambling recollections is the observation that “Charlie Steen had mined his mines in Lisbon Valley, the Mi Vida, and he had beat the state out of millions and millions of dollars by not paying those taxes out as the ore was shipped. He also walked away and left the tax bill." These observations go far beyond being inaccurate. People will probably believe them, because they are in a publication that has a professional historian as Guest Editor. Well, history isn’t history unless it is the truth. And historians owe it to their readers and their subjects to be careful with the truth. And now...The Truth This is what really happened. My father and his partners owned and operated the Mi Vida mine from 1951 until 1962, when the mine and their interests in the Uranium Reduction Company mill in Moab were sold to Atlas Minerals in a $23 million transaction. At that time, any taxes owed to San Juan County or the State of Utah amount Hoot wanted for all six claims. Dad insisted that Hoot hold out for $25,000 for each claim. Since there was no one willing to give Hoot $25,000 for all six claims, let alone a single one, Hoot offered them to my father for the original $100 figure he thought they were worth. Although my father argued and cajoled Douglas Hoot to hold on until the Mi Vida discovery could be proven, Hoot couldn’t be dissuaded from selling. Digging into his last-ditch emergency money, Charlie Steen paid $100 for all six claims, and watched as Hoot caught the bus for Texas. After the new claims had been located, my father sent samples of his drill core to the Atomic Energy Commission in Grand Junction for analysis. When no results were forthcoming, another sample was sent in for analysis in a third party’s name. Both |