Jeffrey D. Nichols History Blazer, December 1996 The history of much of the American West has been marked by boom and bust cycles. Perhaps the most famous example is the California gold rush, which brought tens of thousands of Forty-Niners to the Golden State, a tiny fraction of whom ever struck it rich. Southeastern Utah has experienced a number of …
Utah’s Uranium Boom
Raye C. Ringholz Beehive History 16 It was the winter of 1949 in Houston, Texas. Charles Augustus Steen was twenty-eight years old. Fired as a geologist by the Standard Oil Company of Indiana for “rebellion against authority” and blacklisted throughout the petroleum industry, he was working as a carpenter to support a pregnant wife and three toddlers. But all the …