Description:
In 1950, Cato Sells, a Navajo businessman, obtained three tracts (claims) adjacent to the
Vanadium Corporation of America's (VCA) 1943 Monument No.2 lease in northeastern Apache
County, Arizona. This lease was originally mined for vanadium and was now being mined for
uranium and vanadium. Exploration drilling by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
located orebodies on Cato Sells' tracts. This report is to document the production history of those
tracts.
Location
The Monument No. 2 mine area is located in the extreme northwestern area of Apache
County, Arizona (Figure 1). The mine is in the Cane Valley on the eastern flank of the
Monument Uplift. Access to the mine area was via a 19-mile dirt road that headed south from
U.S. Highway 163 one mile south of the bridge over the San Juan River at Mexican Hat, Utah.
Another access road went from the mine, over Comb Ridge, and connected to U.S. Highway 160
near Mexican Water, Arizona.
The Monument No.2 open pit mine is shown at the center of the right margin of Rooster
Rock topographic quadrangle (USGA, 1988).