Uravan, CO

TravelerUravan (a contraction of uranium/vanadium is a former uranium mining town in western Montrose County, Colorado, United States, which still appears on some maps. The town was a company town established by U. S. Vanadium Corporation in 1936 to extract the rich vanadium ore in the region. As a byproduct of vanadium extraction, small amounts of uranium were also produced, at the time mostly used as a yellow pigment for ceramics.

TravelerThe town was located approximately 90 miles (140 km) south-southwest of Grand Junction along the San Miguel River. At one time, over 800 people lived in Uravan, and the town housed a school, a trading center (store), medical facilities, tennis courts, a recreation center, and a pool. The school and some other facilities remained operational until at least 1983; however, Uravan was shut down by mid-1985, and no traces of its former buildings remain. Uravan is now an uninhabited, undeveloped Superfund site.

TravelerDuring World War II, Uravan provided part of the uranium needed by the Manhattan Project for the first atomic bomb. Because of wartime secrecy the Manhattan Project would only publicly admit to purchasing the vanadium, and did not pay the uranium miners for the uranium ore (in a much later lawsuit, many miners were able to reclaim lost profits from the U.S. In the beginning of the Cold War, to ensure adequate supplies of uranium for national defense, the United States Congress passed the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1946, creating the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) which had the power to withdraw prospective uranium mining land from public purchase, and also to manipulate the price of uranium to meet national needs. By setting a high price for uranium ore, the AEC created a uranium "boom" in the early 1950s, which attracted many prospectors to the Four Corners region of the country. Uravan's fortunes grew as it became one of the major "yellowcake boomtowns" in the region. American military requirements of uranium declined in the 1960s, and the government completed its uranium procurement program by the end of 1970. Simultaneously, a new market emerged: commercial nuclear power plants. However, the U.S. domestic uranium mining industry collapsed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, due to lack of new nuclear power plants, and to low-price uranium imported from Canada. The decision was made to close Uravan in 1985. Environmental cleanup of the site commenced in 1986 and was completed in 2008. 800 inhabitants had to move. All that remains is a turnoff and interpretive sign along State Highway 141. Former residents of Uravan raised funds to preserve a boarding house and recreation center on the old town site, but Dow Chemical, which acquired Union Carbide, the owner of the Uravan mill, in 1999, burned them down in 2007 due to fears of radiative contamination.