Description:
The carnotite deposits of the northern and western Carrizo
Mountains have been mined for their radium, vanadium, and uranium
content since 1920. The deposits, in the Salt Wash Member of the
Morrison Formation, were discovered about 1918 by John F. Wade. In
November 1920, Wade's Radium Ores Company shipped 40,000 pounds of
ore, probably to a buying station in Colorado.
During the early 1940s, in response to a vanadium purchasing
program by the Federal Government, a total of 11,205 tons of ore
averaging 2.24 percent V2OS were produced from five leases in the
northern and western Carrizos. Uranium for the secret wartime
Manhattan Project was recovered from the ores at Monticello, Utah
and Durango, Colorado.
Mining resumed in the Carrizo Mountains in 1948 as the result
of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) uranium procurement program.
From 1948 through 1966, some 60 properties in the northern and
western Carrizo Mountains produced a total of 73,118 tons of ore
averaging 0.21 percent U308 and 1.64 percent V20S- Properties
originally acquired for vanadium mining in the 1940s accounted for
77 percent of the uranium produced under the AEC program.
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