A Landscape With a Much Older Human Story
Uravan's twentieth-century mining history is only the most recent chapter in a landscape occupied by people for centuries. History Colorado records significant archaeological sites near Uravan, including Dolores Cave, occupied from at least about 600 BC to AD 1400, and Tabeguache Cave II, a large rockshelter used from roughly AD 600 to perhaps AD 1500.
Finds from these sites are important because they help archaeologists examine how people lived in western Colorado and how populations and lifeways changed over time. At Dolores Cave, a corn cob dated to around AD 1500 provides evidence of surprisingly late corn cultivation in western Colorado.
This history deserves to be understood on its own terms. The archaeological record predates the mining town by many centuries and connects the Uravan area to the much larger story of Indigenous peoples in western Colorado.
Radium First, Then Vanadium
The minerals that would eventually make Uravan famous were being processed here decades before the nuclear age. History Colorado identifies the Joe Jr. Mill as beginning operation in 1912, processing carnotite ore for radium, vanadium and uranium. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency likewise dates a radium-recovery plant at the site to 1912.
The broader Uravan Mineral Belt became one of the country's important mining regions. Radium drove an early boom in the 1910s and 1920s. Vanadium—valuable for strengthening steel—became increasingly important, particularly in the years surrounding World War II.
The Birth of Uravan
The company town took shape in the 1930s around the mill and mining industry. The name itself reflected the area's future: uranium plus vanadium. Uravan developed into a surprisingly complete community in an isolated canyon landscape, eventually including homes, a school and community amenities for workers and their families.
At its height, the community had hundreds of residents. Uravan was more than an industrial site—it was home. Former residents would continue to identify strongly with the town long after its buildings disappeared.
Uravan and the Manhattan Project
Uravan became part of a secret national effort during World War II. U.S. Department of Energy histories document that the Manhattan Engineer District contracted for uranium from the Colorado Plateau. At Uravan, uranium was recovered from stockpiled vanadium tailings and processed into concentrates that entered the Manhattan Project supply chain.
DOE's official history records that by the end of 1944, the U.S. Vanadium Corporation had produced uranium oxide concentrate from its Uravan stockpile, while a government-owned plant at the same site processed additional tailings. The Colorado Plateau as a whole supplied roughly 14 percent of the uranium oxide acquired for the Manhattan Project by 1946. Much larger shares came from the Belgian Congo and Canada, but Uravan was nevertheless part of the chain that helped usher in the atomic age.
When Uranium Became the Prize
After World War II, uranium changed from a little-valued byproduct into a strategic material. The Atomic Energy Commission encouraged domestic exploration and production, helping drive the uranium boom of the 1950s across southwestern Colorado. Uravan became one of the best-known communities of the Uravan Mineral Belt.
EPA historical records state that the Uravan mill received uranium and vanadium ores from more than 200 mines in the surrounding region as capacity expanded to meet government demand. The industry linked remote mines, mills, geologists, truckers and families across western Colorado to national defense and, later, commercial nuclear energy.
Contamination, Closure and a Town Removed
The same industry that sustained Uravan also left a serious environmental legacy. Milling and waste-disposal practices contaminated soil and groundwater with radioactive constituents, metals and other hazardous materials. The mill closed in 1984, and Uravan was placed on EPA's National Priorities List as a Superfund site in 1986.
The cleanup transformed the landscape. EPA reports that more than 3 million cubic yards of mill wastes and contaminated materials were moved into engineered on-site repositories, about 350 million gallons of liquid waste were removed through groundwater collection, and contaminated materials were addressed across hundreds of acres. Mills, town materials and other structures were dismantled as part of the work.
EPA certified construction of the cleanup as complete in September 2008 after roughly two decades of work. Operation, maintenance and long-term controls continue. The result is unusual even among ghost towns: Uravan was not simply abandoned. Much of the physical town was deliberately removed during environmental remediation.