The need to produce uranium had become a pressingly urgent crisis, although fortunately few Americans knew about it. German scientists had succeeded in splitting the uranium atom in 1938 and held a clear lead in nuclear physics. Rumors hinted that they worked toward developing a bomb. Warned of this by scientists fleeing Nazism, President Franklin Roosevelt, in 1940, created a government agency, along with the Army, to coordinate efforts to mine and smelt ore, and produce an atomic bomb. Out of this grew the Man-hattan Project, which did just that.
Southwestern Colorado and the other Four Corners states had the needed deposits. In fact, carnotite ore had been found in southwestern Colorado in the late nineteenth century. When the Curies unlocked the secret of radium, a use had been found. Right up until World War 1, ores had been mined and refined to use for medical purposes. So the ore existed here.
Out of this grew Durango's role in solving a national and local need. The community desperately looked for something to help pull it out of the depression. People were leaving to go to defense jobs on the west coast and elsewhere. The president of the Chamber of Commerce wrote, "sometime ago we saw the necessity here in Durango of doing something that would maintain our present population."
How desperate? There was even talk of promoting the Fort Lewis campus as a location for a relocation camp for Japanese removed from the west coast. After all, simply because of the draft, only 50 or so students remained at the college. Reopening the smelter provided at least a glimmer of hope.
The Durango Herald (April 30, 1942) observed that while "still in the embryonic stage," the United States Vanadium Corporation "is considering building a vanadium smelter" here. The Colorado Bureau of Mines, in its 1942-43 report, noted that the tailings of the old smelter were being reworked (to recover carnotite) and vanadium deposits were being developed northwest of Durango. Ore was also being brought in from elsewhere in the Four Corners.
The government, meanwhile, controlled everything, from mine to smelter to the uranium being shipped to a refining plant in Grand Junction. From there, it was shipped back east. Uncle Sam also encouraged prospecting for strategic metals and helped improve roads to get the ore to the smelter.
Locals knew that the plant was producing vanadium, a key ingredient for producing a rust-resistant, strong grade of steel. That filled a wartime need. But what else might be going on there, they did not know.
After the testing of the first bomb at White Sands, New Mexico, and dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, which ended the war, Durangoans finally received some hints at what had been transpiring across the Animas River from town.
The Herald (September 6, 1945) reported that the plant's milling of vanadium "ceased operations" several days ago. Most of the ore had come from the Dove Creek area, with a little from local mines. Only 50 men had been employed, a far cry from the Herculean days of the American Smelting and Refining Company, and most of them had now been transferred by the Vanadium Corporation.
Then the newspaper let the locals in on a little secret. A second plant had been built and opened in 1943. That they knew. It operated under an Army contract. The nature of the work there, "presumably connected with the production of uranium is still a military secret." The nature of that work had been to produce uranium some of which was eventually used in those first three atomic bombs.
The city and regional economic impact, at the moment, had not been that great. It would be when the mill was reactivated in 1948-49 during the cold war. Durangoans, like many others, were not sure what this new uranium era meant. One local lady, though, had her ideas. She blamed the bomb for a fascinating development: "I was born and raised here and things aren't like they used to be at all. We didn't have fogs. Now we have fogs."
Duane Smith has been a Professor of History and Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College since 1964. He focuses his research and writing on Colorado, mining, Civil War, urban and baseball history. Smith is a member of the La Plata County Historical Society board of directors.
