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Show October 7, 193S Page Fifteen The Western Mineral Surrey. Salt Lake City, Utah Radioactive Social Standing Low f DILWORTH S. WOOLLEY (As Told To O. D. Quinlan) BY My associates and I went into uranium with only one thought in mind: To become wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice and to do it without work. The idea that untold riches lay just beneath the surface of die wild, desolate reaches of the Colorado Plateau was a lure too great to be resisted especially when we could conduct the enterprise strictly as Gentlemen Prospectors. There were six of us involved in the venture. H. H. (Bill) Fisher, vice president and general manager of yFisher Brewing Co., Salt Lake City; Richard L. Evans, editor and broadcast commentator of The Spoken Word" and the Improvement Era; Wayne W. Huish, proprietor of die G & H Casket Manufacturing Co., Salt Lake City; Joseph T. Butler, general agent for the Aetna Life Insurance Co., Salt Lake City; Harold Woolley, account executive, television station, K.T.V.T., Salt Lake City and myself, Dilworth S. Woolley, vice president and general manager of the Redman Van & Storage Co., Salt Lake City. The proposition we selected was hand picked for our purposes. We, therefore, poured over the Thirty-thre- e years ago, I had sur- old maps and field notes one blusveyed the Henry Mountains and tery winter afternoon at the club the Burr desert south of Hanks-vill- and selected the precise spot Utah for the United States where "Desolation Uranium," General Land Office. would commence operations. Desert rats and prospectors We selected the north 12 lots in were mining uranium in that Section 2, Township 31, South country in those days. Harold Range, 11 East, S.L.B.M., as the the Colorado Uranium Co. logical and proper piece of propand a number of others were erty with which to begin. the carnotite trash Cynics could claim that we seMorrison in the and outcrops lected this particular parcel of piles shipping the ore by burro to ground because it was the only Green River and thence to the school section in the area not east where it was refined for its filed upon and because the temradium content and for use in the perature at the time was 20 beceramics industry. low, which made field prospectWhile I will admit that the lo- ing rather uninteresting. cation of this fabulous deposit had But the cynics would be wrong. been somewhat glamorized over I will admit that Section 2 was the years, in my memory, it "at liberty at the time we filed, seemed that it would be fairly and I will admit that I hadnt simple to pick up the prize deposit been on the ground for 33 years, of them all before the modern and that none of the others had day "get rich quick" hordes could ever been on it. scramble over those ageless hills But arent all uranium finds with their geiger counters and a matter of luck? Isnt there a claim the wealth ahead of us. great deal of speculation in the e, Ek-ke- r, high-gradin- g WE ARE PROUD TO REPRESENT THE STATE OF UTAH IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE URANIUM INDUSTRY MK)-CONTINE- NT Investments CALL US FOB THE LATEST QUOTATIONS OH THE CRAHinU MABKET 300 Atlas Bldg. Ph. EM 4-65- 95 - EM entire industry, even with the vast improvements in radiometric prospecting currently being employed? In order to avoid being classed with week-enprospectors who the hills in the into keep running dollar or two, a of hope finding we organized our expedition complete to the last water sack and spare tire and departed on a Thursday. We came early to the conclusion that we would not attempt to sell any stock since that would involve routine business problems which we were seeking to escape. We all could get into plenty of trouble in our own daily activity. As soon as we had located enough easy money to guarantee a change in our way of life, it was our intention to leave Desolation Uranium in the hands of the experts and take off on a spending spree which would establish a high water mark for the marketing world. We found Hanksville with a population of thirty people, virtually unchanged over the years. This, if you will recall, was in May, 1954 and Vernon Pick had just made his sale to Floyd Odium. The Hidden Splendor is 40 miles north of Hanksville, and the town had not really started on the uranium boom which was to d follow. We found the property all right, and it was exactly as I had remembered it. Rolling and eroded sandstone ledges and hills ran up the flanks of the Henry Mountains, to the south and east of Granite wash, south of us, down towards Trachyte, North Wash and Hite, a little perfunctory uranium mining was going on and. the evidences of old uranium ible uranium on the Desolation Claim. As a matter of fact, he said, we had 554.32 acres of salt wash Morrison ranging from 20 to 300 n thickness with no visible evidences of uranium. d In a unemotional fashion, Fred Johnson recomcold-bloode- 4-44- 72 Something can be said, however, for the stimulus given to your imagination by such an adventure. Perhaps our decision not to invite the general public into the venture has been a mistake. Perhaps in the uranium business it is easier to mine the public than it is to mine the good earth. Perhaps all these Texas millionaires and well heeled financiers have not taken Desolation Uranium as seriously as they should, because up to now no one has offered to buy us out. Of course, we can always go down and prospect the property ourselves which we frequently do and there are those in the group who are still in favor of holding on just for the purpose of having the claim to go visit. It is sort of like a dryland fishing expedition you can always hope you will ANNOUNCEMENT KISMET Uranium and Oil .Corporation A NEVADA CORPORATION Is Pleased to Now Offer to Its Many Friends 8,000,00 SHARES OF COMMON STOCK NON-ASSESAB- LE AT a brief investigation we headed home loaded with samples and high hopes. James B. Sadler, president of the Union Assay Office, Inc., at Salt Lake City cost us at least eight million dollars at this point. The red hot sample of "pure stuff that we had brought back, he said were just aluminum oxide sandstone and trash. We werent satisfied with this rebuff so we employed J. Fred Johnson, prominent American Smelter & Refining Co. engineer, to make a careful exploration of the property. This he did, and reported to us that there was plenty of salt wash Morrison and not much vis away. mend a $10,000 drilling program to ascertain where the uranium bed might lie. With some reluctance, he admitted that this particular bed of salt wash was the productive horizon in the Henry Mountain section and that Desolation had a lot of it, but (he also pointed out that the productive zones which were being mined further south from us were some 20 to 150 under ground and if we expected to find any uranium, we would have to drill holes for it. That was a dismal prospect indeed. We had gone into this proposition with the Intention of mak locate a big one. workings were everywhere apparent. It was clearly the country we had been looking for and after SECURITIES Stocks - Bonds Dinosaur bones at .07 reading were the extent oi finds for 'gentleman prospectors' Joseph T. Bntler, Hack their claims near Woolley and H. H. (Bill) Fisher who hand-picke- d Henry Mountains. POINT OF DESOLATION ing money, not spending it. Naturally, such a solution required another expedition and again, this spring we made it. On this occasion we picked up a bunch of dinosaur bones which ran 0.7 on the radiometric scale, but there dont seem to be enough dinosaurs in the country to make collecting them or their bones, a paying venture. We have reluctantly found that our radioactive social standing has not improved as rapidly as we had intended. You sit by a tiny fire of cedar and mountain mahogany with a million stars in the sky and the wind fingering the eroded sandstone ledges etched against them. You hold hold the shinbone of a creature that sloshed through the ooze a million years ago and you have infinity both in distance and in time for your magination to swng through. It makes the firelight seem awfully miportant and the world of people little and far PERSHARE FOR OFFERING CIRCULAR WRITE 1 492 South 2nd West Telefkoi, IN 11, Salt Lake City IN M 2-24- 01 This announcement is not an offer to sell nor a solicitation to bu7 these securities. Such offering is made in Utah, solely by means of the offering circular. |