Charlie Steen, center, stands with his lawyer, Mitch Melich, and Uranium Reduction Company General Manager Ray Hollis, alongside barrels of yellowcake, or processed uranium ore. Steen’s dog, Butch, is in the background. Photo courtesy of the Moab Museum,
Charlie Steen, center, stands with his lawyer, Mitch Melich, and Uranium Reduction Company General Manager Ray Hollis, alongside barrels of yellowcake, or processed uranium ore. Steen’s dog, Butch, is in the background. Photo courtesy of the Moab Museum,

MOAB, Utah – With its unique landscape and national and state parks, Moab is a tourist destination for adventurers and nature enthusiasts.

   But it was a different place decades ago. In the 1950s, the sleepy agricultural town became a hotbed for aspiring prospectors and miners looking to get rich after a local discovery of high-grade uranium ore.

   The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the predecessor agency to DOE, offered to pay people to find the ore. Charlie Steen, a trained geologist from Texas, headed to the Colorado Plateau with his pregnant wife and children in an old Jeep to look for it, according to Canyon Legacy, a publication by the Moab Museum.

   Before moving, Steen had been fired from a job and was making ends meet in home improvement. He combed southeast Utah for the high-grade uranium ore. After years of scraping by and searching for the element, he discovered the largest deposit of high-grade uranium ore in the U.S., worth $60 million.

   As a result, Moab and the surrounding area became the center of a new “gold rush.”

   Steen’s discovery of the first of many major uranium ore bodies in the Lisbon Valley area ushered in a new mining era that led not only to riches for many people but also to the construction of the Moab mill, the world’s largest uranium ore processing mill at that time. The mill helped to generate additional jobs and property taxes for the area.

Charlie Steen in 1955. Used by permission, Utah State Historical Society.
Charlie Steen in 1955. Used by permission, Utah State Historical Society.

   The Uranium Reduction Company built the mill in 1956 and operated it until 1962, when the assets were sold to Atlas Minerals Corporation. Uranium concentrate, the milling product, was sold to the AEC through December 1970.

   When Moab milling operations ceased in 1984, an unlined impoundment on the site contained an estimated 16 million tons of uranium mill tailings and tailings-contaminated soil leftover from processing uranium ore.

   Atlas declared bankruptcy in 1998. In 2001, congressional legislation allowed for the transfer of responsibility for the millsite to DOE. DOE has reclamation and long-term management responsibilities for the site, now known as EM’s Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action (UMTRA) Project. The Moab UMTRA Project is relocating tailings and other contaminated materials from the Moab Site to an engineered disposal cell constructed near Crescent Junction, Utah. EM’s work scope also includes active remediation of groundwater at the Moab Site.

   Steen and his wife M.L. donated land to a school and area churches and gave money to help build a new hospital, according to the Moab Times-Independent. In 1992, the city of Moab marked the 40th anniversary of Steen’s discovery and recognized the family’s contributions to the area.

   Moab is still connected to its past. Nearby Canyonlands National Park has remnants from the era of milling, with mining roads now used by people to explore the park by vehicle. The Moab Museum, established in 1958, is being renovated and is set to reopen this year. The mansion where the Steens lived atop a hill near the Moab UMTRA Project is now a restaurant.