After Uravan was closed and set for demolition, its residents were forced elsewhere. Today, Uravan’s nearby baseball park hosts an annual gathering of former residents who gather just down the road from the now-buried town. A pair of sisters are fighting to preserve the history through a local museum dedicated to the town; but not everyone was happy to have a polluting nuclear neighbor. In an interview with EPA superfund officials, we learn the philosophy of cleanup that led to the reclamation of Uravan – and how a new uranium boom refuses to let the dust settle for too long.

Far away from the mines of the Colorado Plateau, the first nuclear reactor in the world is built in Washington State. Here, uranium was used to create plutonium, showing the ore didn’t just impact the people who pulled it out of the mountain, but the people who enriched and tested it down the nuclear supply chain. As more atomic veterans died from radiation exposure, their families sought to hold someone accountable, and litigants from Hanford, WA, would be the first to blaze the trail.

By the 1980s, uranium towns like Uravan had weathered a few booms and busts. The promises of the atomic future – flying cars and limitless electricity – weren’t coming to fruition. Along the way, health professionals began to notice that miners were dying from cancer at alarming rates. As radiological science improved, it was clear that uranium posed a health risk to those who mined and lived in uranium towns like Uravan – but just how much is still a point of debate.

After World War II, uranium becomes one of the most sought-after elements in the world. In the sparse canyons of the four-corners region, uranium company towns begin to spring up to mine and sell the ore to the U.S. Government. But one town, named Uravan, would disappear entirely.

In the early years of atomic science, the discovery of cancer-curing radium drove prospective miners to the far reaches of the isolated Colorado Plateau. As they hunted for the rare mineral, workers uncovered a yellow ore called uranium – a glowing rock worth little to nothing.