Charles Steen

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Charles A. Steen (1919-2006)

Charles Augustus Steen (born December 1, 1919 in Caddo, Texas , † January 1, 2006 in Loveland, Colorado) was an American geologist who discovered an abundant uranium deposit in Utah during the uranium boom in the early 1950s .

Life

Charlie Steen was born in 1919 in Caddo, Stephens County, Texas to Charles A. and Rosalie Wilson Steen. He attended high school in Houston and worked for a construction company during the summer school days to fund his studies. He later studied at Tarleton State University in Stephenville (Texas) , where he also met his future wife Minnie Lee Holland. In 1940 he moved to the Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy (now the University of Texas at El Paso ), which he completed in 1943 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in geology.

Found unfit for military service due to his poor eyesight , he worked as a petroleum geologist in the Amazon basin , Bolivia and Peru during World War II . In 1945 he returned to Texas and married his wife Minnie Lee. He later studied at the University of Chicago , but dropped out after a year and worked for the Standard Oil Company . After the next two years he was fired there for disobedience and had difficulties getting a new job in the petroleum industry.

Uranium boom

Steen's camp at Yellow Cat (near Cisco, Utah ) in 1950

In 1949, he saw an advertisement from the United States federal government in the December issue of The Engineering and Mining Journal, offering a reward for finding uranium deposits. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 authorized the Atomic Energy Commission to take land from private owners in order to search for uranium. During World War II, most of the uranium was mined for the Manhattan Project in Canada and Belgian Congo , and some came from the vanadium mines in the southwestern United States where it was a by-product. Nevertheless, there were concerns that there might be a bottleneck in uranium procurement for the nuclear bomb program.

In the late 1940s, the United States Atomic Energy Commission ruled that it was the only legal buyer of uranium on US territory. At the same time, the price of uranium was artificially increased to give an incentive for prospecting in the Four Corners area, i.e. where the four US states of Utah , Colorado , New Mexico and Arizona meet (clockwise, starting in the northwest) .

Although his sons Johnny, Andy, and Charles Jr. were very young and his wife was expecting another child, he borrowed $ 1,000 from his mother and the family traveled to the Colorado Plateau in hopes of finding them. After months of unsuccessfulness and financial difficulties, the family finally moved to Tucson . Steen worked there as a carpenter for a year, but could not give up the idea of ​​finding uranium. So the family moved back to their claim in Utah. During the move, his wife Minnie Lee developed pneumonia and the necessary treatment wiped out the last of his savings so that Steen could not buy a much-needed Geiger counter. Instead, he relied on his second-hand drilling equipment and geological knowledge to find uranium. At that time the uranium industry consisted of many prospectors and geologists who hoped to find a large deposit to mine themselves - or for a large company such as Union Carbide , which could process the ore into yellowcake straight away . Steen's theory was that the deposits exist in a form similar to that of petroleum.

Mi Vida

Steen the day after his discovery of the "Mi Vida"
Uraninite from the Mi Vida mine

On July 6, 1962, he made the long-awaited big find, which was not yet clear to him at the time. He was drilling through several layers of sandstone when his drill bit broke off at a depth of 60 meters, less than a meter from the intended target. Three weeks later he took a piece of the drill core dyed black with him to Cisco. At a friend's house they held the piece up to a Geiger counter which showed a very high level of radiation. The deposit is located on the Big Indian Wash, southeast of Moab . It turned out to be one of the greatest uranium discoveries of the century, Steen renamed his claim Mi Vida Mine (My Life); A uranium rush soon broke out in the region, similar to the gold rush in California in the 1850s.

Uranium Reduction Company, Moab, Utah

In Moab, Steen built a villa on a hill to replace his barrack, with a pool, greenhouse and adjoining room. Today there is a restaurant in the house. He founded various companies such as the Utex Exploration Company, Moab Drilling Company, Mi Vida Company, Big Indian Mines Inc. and the Uranium Reduction Company. His fortune grew rapidly and so he gave annual parties to which all Moab residents were invited and took rumba dance lessons in Salt Lake City , to which he traveled by private plane. He also donated $ 50,000 to a new hospital and bought land for churches and schools.

Steen was in the 1958 Utah State Senate ( Utah State Senate selected), but was disillusioned by politics and entered 1961 again. He founded a ranch near Reno in the US state of Nevada and built a 2,500 m² villa on it. He sold the Utex Exploration Company and the Uranium Reduction Company in 1962. By the late 1950s, the US government had mined enough uranium and stopped the subsidy ; the market collapsed in 1960. Steen tried to diversify his fortune, invested in an Arab horse breeding , a marble quarry, an aircraft factory, cucumber cultivation and real estate which brought him no success - in 1968 he had to file for bankruptcy. After a long illness, suffering from Alzheimer's , Steen died on January 1, 2006 in Loveland. Minnie Lee died in July 1997. The ashes of both were scattered on the Mi Vida mine .

Legacy

Although Steen was able to build a $ 130 million fortune, which he also lost again due to unfavorable price developments in the uranium market, lavish lifestyle and unfavorable financial investments, he is considered one of the most successful and productive uranium mine operators during the Cold War . His life story was the basis for two films, numerous books and the name Steen was closely linked to the small town of Moab, which was now called the "uranium capital" or the "richest city in America". On November 4, 2016, a memorial stone financed by private donations was erected at the Anticline Overlook to commemorate the former uranium mining in the region.

literature

  • Al Look: U-boom . Bell, 1956.
  • The Editors of Time-Life Books: The Mountain States . Time Life Books Inc., 1967, OCLC 1973746 .
  • Raymond W. and Samuel W. Taylor: Uranium Fever or No Talk Under $ 1 Million . MacMillan, 1970, OCLC 73745 .
  • Raye Carleson Ringholz: Uranium Frenzy: Boom and Bust on the Colorado Plateau . WW Norton & Co., Inc, 1989, ISBN 0-393-02644-2 .
  • Michael Amundson: Yellowcake Towns: Uranium Mining Communities in the American West . University Press of Colorado, 2002, ISBN 0-87081-662-4 .
  • Tom McCourt: The Moab Story: From Cowpokes to Bike Spokes . Johnson Books Boulder, 2007, ISBN 978-1-55566-396-4 .
  • Tom Zoellner: Uranium: War, Energy, And The Rock That Shaped The World . Viking, 2009, ISBN 978-0-670-02064-5 .
  • Charles A. Steen: Uranium Mining Operations of the Utex Exploration Co. in the Big Indian District. San Juan County, Utah . Information Circular 7669 . US Department of the Interior, US Bureau of Mines, Washington DC: GPO, 1952 (Retrieved May 30, 2011).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Mark Steen: "My Old Man": The Uranium King. Part 1 . In: Canyon Country Zephyr , February – March 2002. Retrieved October 17, 2013. 
  2. ↑ a b ward Harkavy: Fallout in the Family . 1998.
  3. ↑ a b c Lisa J. Church: 'Uranium King' altered Moab 'forever' . In: The Salt Lake Tribune , March 24, 2006. Retrieved October 17, 2013. 
  4. ↑ a b End of an era: The Uranium King is Dead . In: The Moab Times-Independent , March 22, 2006. Retrieved October 17, 2013. 
  5. ↑ Steen, Charles A. . In: Mining Hall of Fame Inductees Database . National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum . 1996. Retrieved October 17, 2013.
  6. ↑ Mark Steen: "My Old Man": The Uranium King. Part 2 . In: Canyon Country Zephyr , April – May 2002. Retrieved October 17, 2013. 
  7. ↑ Jensen Buckley: Charles Steen- The uranium king of san juan . San Juan Record. Retrieved May 16, 2016.
  8. ↑ Mark Steen: "My Old Man": The Uranium King. Part 4 . In: Canyon Country Zephyr , August – September 2002. Retrieved October 17, 2013. 
  9. ↑ a b Russel Nielsen: Made fortune in uranium, prospector fights to keep it . In: The Milwaukee Journal , October 16, 1968, p. 1. Retrieved October 17, 2013. 
  10. ↑ New historical marker installed near Lisbon Valley mine site commemorates region's complex uranium heritage . In: The Times-Independent , October 27, 2016. Retrieved November 22, 2016. 
personal data
SURNAME Steen, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steen, Charles Augustus (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geologist who discovered an abundant uranium deposit in Utah during the uranium boom in the early 1950s
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Caddo (Texas)
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 2006
Place of death Loveland (Colorado)