In 1954 the Riverton uranium boom was, well, booming. According to a story making the rounds, a local opportunist we'll call Gary met a mark in the bar. The mark was a wannabe millionaire newly arrived in town with a pocket full of cash and an itch to own some uranium claims. Gary just happened to have some very good claims for sale. And he could explain why he had to part with them now and forgo becoming a millionaire himself later. They agreed to meet for breakfast, then look at the claims.
Gary, according to the story, drove into the desert that night, planted a post in the ground, and the next day sold it to the mark for $50,000.
The story is likely apocryphal. But it just might have been true because of a smaller-than-a-breadbox device called the geiger counter . . . and because of uranium's little secret.
No one ever prospected that way before
The geiger counter made prospecting a totally new endeavor. A man could get out of his pickup, turn on his machine, and start walking through the sagebrush. He was prospecting. If his machine clicked with sufficient excitement, he had located uranium.
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Even movie makers prospected.
Notice the geiger counter.
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And uranium's secret? It is a relatively common, widely distributed mineral in Wyoming; and, thanks to the geiger counter, it is relatively easy to track down. Thirty-five million years ago it had been deposited in beds of ash formed by volcanic eruptions in the Absaroka Range; that is, in the Yellowstone Park area.
Knowledgeable prospectors were searching for an elusive find: uranium deposited in concentrations sufficient to be profitably mined. Others were filing claims on "hot spots" all over the place.
So the scam story sounds more plausible if we assume Gary planted his post in a location he already knew would tickle a Geiger counter. That morning the mark could have flipped a switch, heard chirps, and believed he had struck it rich.
Mining the prospectors
Like earlier mineral rushes, the uranium boom created a separate economy, extravagant and transitory. Take lawyers, for instance. A complicated tangle of state and federal mineral laws produced a windfall for them, especially in central Wyoming where angry landowners were trying to fend off swarm of prospectors.
Quite apart from other uranium related business ventures, each claim--the actual plot of land staked out by a prospector--made money for local entrepreneurs, regardless of its subsequent value to the owner. By 1955 more than 7,000 uranium claims had been registered in Fremont County alone.
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How to stake a claim.
(BLM)
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In order to stake a mineral claim on BLM land, a prospector had to mark off on the ground a 1500 foot X 600 foot area, with a centerline, that was precisely located. So he had to bring in a survey team.
He needed to identify the claim with seven "monuments." These were usually 4" X 4" wooden posts, six feet long and painted white, buried two feet into the ground. He had to buy them, then pay for workers and equipment to transport, distribute, and dig them in. Filing fees had to be paid. Claim documents had to be affixed to monuments. So considerable cash changed hands right at the start.
When we remember that claims were rarely filed singly; that they abutted each other in blocks of 20, 50, 100, or more; we have a measure of how much money prospectors had to be ready to put on the table up front, as soon as they decided the noise made by their geiger counter was sufficiently encouraging.
Then all they owned was a year of hope
So let's say a claim met all specifications and had been officially recorded. This is the point at which, 17 years old, I enter the story. I participated in the uranium rush as a claims validator (a function that sounds more impressive than it was).
Once claims were registered, prospectors still had to pay to have them validated. That is, within a year of filing they had to submit proof that a required amount of exploration work had been performed along the center line. Otherwise claims expired automatically.
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Uranium claims validated by backhoe
(Wyoming Public Media)
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Claims could be validated in two ways. One method was expensive and ugly. A bulldozer or back hoe exposed a ten-foot wall of earth on each claim, leaving a big hole in the ground with a pile of dirt.
The second validation method left barely perceptible environmental damage. It could be costly, or just pricey, depending on the equipment used. The validator certified that he had drilled 50 feet of hole near the centerline of the claim (bringing up soil samples in the process). The total could be cumulative as long as each hole was at least 10 feet deep. So even five holes a yard apart would meet the legal requirement.
That summer, 1954, I was between my junior and senior years in high school and wanted a break from hauling drilling mud for the family truck company. Wages were good, a buck fifty an hour. There was plenty of work. So I freelanced as a laborer.
Seemed like everybody was making money
I helped roof a house; painted the interior of the Sky Club, a new night club by the airport; then was hired to validate claims using a small auger drilling rig. It had a seven-foot mast and was mounted on the back of a jeep pickup.
The rig owner would contract to validate a block of claims, tow a camper trailer to the site, and leave me there with the rig and a 14 year old helper to do the work. We were paid by the claim and validated four or five per day.
The money was good for a couple of weeks. Then we ran out of claims. My boss owned a supper club in Hudson and found work for the drilling rig while tending bar. That is, he found work if the right person put an elbow on the bar and asked the right questions.
Someone suggested I talk to Mr Burleson, a Riverton pharmacist who was moonlighting as a broker. He would contract to validate a block of claims, then contract with a driller to do the work. He had a backlog of commitments he couldn't fulfill. Apparently a drug store was better than a bar for doing business on the side.
A little wheeling, a little dealing
Keeping the pharmacist a secret from the club owner, and the club owner a secret from the pharmacist, I negotiated a handshake lease of the drilling rig. I fired the fourteen year old, hired Neil McMillan, a friend my age, and started validating uranium claims seriously.
Neil and I modeled our work procedures on the efficient operations we'd seen on oil drilling rigs. Soon I was signing off on ten claims a day, twelve if the drilling was easy. I was paying him $50 a day, banking $125 myself, and the club owner and pharmacist were grinning.
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| Neil and Maxine McNeice (Riverton Museum) |
A closing note about those geiger counters. Neil McNeice and his wife Maxine made the big Lucky Mac strike in October, 1953, winning the million dollar reward offered by the government. The subsequent mining operation multiplied their wealth. They discovered their uranium deposit using a pair of binoculars. While hunting antelope Neil spotted a broad seam of ore in a cliff some distance away.
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The Lucky Mac
Mine
(Riverton Ranger)
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A Seasonal Ranger Screws Up His First Arrest
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