Uravan, Colorado

Uravan (a contraction of Uranium vanadium) is an abandoned uranium mining town in western Montrose County, Colorado, United States, that is now a Superfund site. 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.

The 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. However, Uravan was abandoned by the 1980s, and no trace of its former buildings remain.

There are several prehistoric sites near Uravan on the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties:

In 1885, placer gold was discovered in a tributary of the San Miguel River, Mesa Creek, nine miles from Ouray. The Montrose Placer Mining Company constructed the "Hanging Flume" on the east wall of Dolores River Canyon.

During 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. government).

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 towns" in the region.

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Wikipedia