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Show "My Old Man:” THE URANIUM KING (CONTINUES) 2s concentrated down dip would be found in thicker deposits on this part of the anticlinal structure. He also saw that a large section of the upper rock formations had been removed - by erosion, and knew that he would not have to drill through more than three hundred feet of going directly on to Grand Junction to get some tools to fish out the broken bit. He remembered to bring along several samples of the grayish-black core, and when he got to Cisco he drove straight to Buddy Cowger’s service station to gas up on credit. Buddy was also a prospector and a good friend. Like practically every uranium prospector on the Colorado Plateau except for Charlie Steen, Buddy owned a Geiger counter; and he was examining some samples when Dad pulled up. Impatient to be on his way, my father said, “Hell, I’ve got some stuff that’ll do better than yours.” When my Dad placed a piece of the grayish-black core next to the Geiger counter the needle leaped out of sight and the counter went crazy. In a flash Charlie Steen realized that he had cored through 14 feet of pitchblende, one of the primary ores of uranium. Until July 6, 1952, nobody had ever found pitchblende on the Colorado Plateau, and my Dad had only seen specimens in museums, but he knew that the hole had finally come in for the Steen family. Dad whirled around and started running of the Wingate sandstone in order to prove his geologic theory. After spending less than a day examining the rock formations and considering the geology of the area, Dad decided to stake the ground back of the Big Buck claims. Because of the rough nature of the ground and the fact that there were areas with hundreds of feet of air between the places where my father was marking the boundaries of his claims it was very slow going. Working alone, using his Brunton compass and pacing off the 600 by 1500 foot claims, Dad didn’t encounter any signs that the ground fede ever been staked by anyone else. After this ground became some of the most valuable land in the 5 county, there were several extensive title searches completed for legal reasons, and they didn’t disclose any prior locations. At the end of several weeks, Charlie Steen had staked 11 mining claims: the Mi Vida, Linda Mujer, Mi Amorcita, Mi Alma, Bacardi, Te Quiero, Fundadoro, Pisco, Besame Mucho, Mi Corozan, and the Mujer Sin Verguenza. Another claim, the Ann, was staked later. Most of these mining claims were named after Spanish expressions contained in popular songs that Dad had heard in Peru. The Mi Vida claim literally means “My Life” in Spanish, but it actually means much more when it is used in the context of expressing one's feelings towards a woman. Never was a mining claim more aptly named than the _ Mi Vida. : Charlie Steen filed his claims with the County Recorder in Monticello on March 7, 1951. Now that he had located his prospect, Dad had to convince someone to back his belief that uranium could be found beneath his claims, because the ore horizon was at least 200 feet below the surface and his portable drill could barely penetrate 50 feet. His theory was ridiculed and criticized by AEC geologists who were familiar with the country, and company geologists figured that they knew more about uranium ore deposits than some newcomer from Texas. The fact all the experts unanimously agreed on, that the Big Indian country was worthless, only stiffened my father’s determination to prove them all wrong. Dead Broke and The Dream on Hold (for a moment) : By this time the Steens were dead broke, so we moved to Tucson, where Dad worked as a carpenter and scraped together a small grubstake for another shot at prospecting. All the time he was in Arizona, Dad knew. that he had to do his assessment work on his Big Indian claims or lose them by default. With my mother’s encouragement, Dad turned down a job offer to work as a petroleum geologist, sold the trailer for $375, piled everything we owned on top of the jeep and headed back to Cisco, where we moved into a $15 a month tarpaper shack. Bill McCormick came through with a beat-up, second-hand drilling rig and enough money to bulldoze four miles of rough road into the heart of the Mi Vida claim. Rosalie Shumaker sold her furniture for $1700 and came to Utah with a friend named Douglas Hoot to help her son find his fortune. Dad set the drill up as far down dip as possible and began drilling on July 3, 1952. After three days of drilling, at a depth of 73 feet, they started bringing up a grayish-black core that resembled coal. Dad and Hoot drilled through 14 feet of this unusual formation and my father set it aside to examine later. Three weeks later, on July 27, the drill bit suddenly broke off the drill stem at a depth of 197 feet-—only three feet short of my father’s goal. No yellow carnotite had been encountered. Just about beaten from frustration, Dad drove the 100 miles to Cisco with the intention THE FUTURE: Charlie & M.L plan their hillside home above Moab, barely a year after their Discovery. towards the shack where Mom was waiting for news from the Big Indian. After hitting her clothesline, he burst in the shack yelling: “We've hit it! We've hit it! It’s a million dollar lick!” My father grabbed my mother and together they celebrated the discovery of the Mi Vida mine without knowing how profoundly their lives were about to change. In the next installments of this series, I'll relate the history of the Mi Vida mine’s development, the formation of Utex Exploration Company and Standard Uranium, the exploration and exploitation of the Big Indian mining district, the disputes, the claim jumpers, the million dollar lawsuits and the struggle to construct the Uranium Reduction Company mill in boomtown Moab, the “Uranium Capital of the World.” MS The April/May Issue of The Zephyr will be on newsstands in early April 1471 Main St. Desert Plaza 259.7735 ea SN family hairstvling Where's Barney? Marilyn Who??? We've got DENISE!!! SHOCKING PHO REVEALS... Pete is actually FLOYD the BARBER! Q2l1N. Main St. Moab, Utah 435.259.6007 ov 800.733.6007 JS com |