The Grand Canyon’s Uranium Question

But how many people know the Grand Canyon and the surrounding area is one of the best places in the United States to mine uranium? That’s right, the nuclear fuel for reactors and bombs is actually fairly plentiful around the state’s most important landmark. A Navajo man discovered uranium in Monument Valley in 1942 on the Navajo Indian Reservation and the first mine there opened in 1948. Mining stopped in the Monument Valley district in 1969, after producing 8.7 million pounds of uranium oxide, more than has been produced anywhere else in Arizona. Mining continued at spots within the Navajo Reservation, however. The area around the Grand Canyon was determined to have substantial amounts of uranium when the mineral was discovered in the Orphan copper mine near the south rim of the Grand Canyon in 1950. The mine is on private property held since 1906, and is today completely surrounded by Grand Canyon National Park. The 1950 discovery led to finds of uranium in other collapsed breccia pipes in areas around the Grand Canyon. There are even some exposed uranium shafts along the canyon walls. The Arizona Strip Wilderness Act of 1984, recognized the uranium potential of over one half million acres of Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands in northern Arizona by releasing them from wilderness classification so they could be explored and mined. But with prices low at the time, not much happened. But as prices of uranium on the rose and demand increased, many firms began to explore 1.1 million acres of federal land surrounding the canyon that could be exploited for the uranium located in these breccia pipes...more