by Edward Abbey
Petrified wood is also common in the canyon country. Not so much in the vast formations of sandstone which bulk largest in the landscape but at odd, irregular places where clays, shales and mudstones appear. Among the liver-colored hills along the Paria; under the Orange Cliffs west of the standing rocks; in the exquisitely carved façades that line the Fremont River; and in general in any sort of “badlands” or painted-desert terrain. Nothing so extensive or spectacular as the deposits in Petrified Forest National Park, to be sure, but interesting and beautiful just the same. The gradual cell-by-cell replacement or infiltration of buried logs by hot, silica-bearing waters in a process so exact that the original cellular structure of the wood is preserved in all its detail forms this desert jewelry—agatized rainbows in rock. Coming unexpectedly upon such a trove a man is sometimes overcome by greed; by the mad desire to possess it all, to load his pockets, his knapsack, his truck with these hard lustrous treasures and somehow transport them all from the wilderness to the shop, garage and backyard. An understandable mania; packrats, hoarding string, tinfoil, old shoes and plastic spoons, suffer from the same instinct. So that over the surface of the earth a general redistribution of all that is loose, not nailed or bolted down, takes place, hastening the processes of geology, and continents sag at the edges. Silly perhaps but not in the long run harmful; nothing is really lost except that epiphenomenon known as human delight. This too will be replaced.
Up north in the Roan Cliffs are seams of low-grade coal; and throughout an area larger than many states where Utah, Colorado and Wyoming meet lies an immense reserve of shale oil—riches for somebody. But these are not strictly speaking rock forms. There are traces of gold in the Colorado River and the sunken ruins of gigantic dredges; a few lead, zinc and silver mines scattered about; but the only rock which has so far proved to be of commercial value in the canyon country is that called carnotite. Carnotite, a greenish-yellow ore, is a complex mineral containing radon gas, vanadium and—uranium.
Here was a treasure. Spurred by the exciting demands of the Cold War the Atomic Energy Commission, soon after our technicians had shown what they could do (Hiroshima, Nagasaki), began to promote an intensive search for uranium. With known deposits in the Southwest, the search was concentrated here, attracting fortune-hunters from everywhere. Some struck it rich; the professional geologist Charles Steen after years of patient development and hard-luck frustrations suddenly patented a mine he called (with revealing pathos) Mi Vida. Aided by a discovery bonus from the A.E.C., financed by the bankers of Denver and Salt Lake City, he bought heavy mining equipment and a fleet of ore trucks, hired miners and truckers, built an ore-reduction mill on the banks of the Colorado, and became after years of effort a happy if beleaguered millionaire. He constructed a modest mansion on a rocky waterless ledge overlooking Moab; invited relatives, friends and neighbors in for one great barbecue after another; endured threats of blackmail and kidnapping (he had children) from mysterious strangers; built a garrison-type steel fence topped with barbed wire around his entire property and employed guards and a gatekeeper; planted trees along the fence to soften the warlike aspect; ran for public office and was elected; tried to legalize hard liquor and was defeated; sold his mill to the Vanadium Corporation of America; moved elsewhere; came back; moved again.
Another prospector, an amateur but equally fortunate, was Vernon Pick. Drifting in from somewhere out of the Midwest, he lost himself for weeks at a time among the haunted monoliths and goblin gulches above the Dirty Devil River; poisoned himself drinking its foul waters but survived to locate deep in that intricate voodooland a smoldering radioactive hoard which he named, poetically, The Hidden Splendor.
Some of the native Utahns also made money, particularly the ones shrewd enough the moment the boom took off to hustle out into the boondocks and stake claims on everything in sight. A few of these claims were developed and some yielded a profitable tonnage of uranium ore; but most of the wealth was acquired not in mining but in the trading and selling of claims and shares in mining companies which never got beyond the paperwork. Speculation was the big thing; and the money poured in from all over the United States from those persons, always numerous in our society, eager to profit from the labor of others, anxious to harvest what they had not sown. But here was planting, of a sort—the variety known in the industry as “salting”—and many investors, betrayed by their greed, were taken for a jolly ride.
The serious prospecting was carried out by the technicians of the Atomic Energy Commission. Equipped with powerful scintillometers, they cruised in airplanes back and forth above the Colorado Plateau, mapping the hot spots. The information thus obtained was made available to the public but usually too late. The small-time prospector, grinding in by jeep, would arrive in time to see the helicopters of some big mining company rising skyward and the land neatly staked out in acres and acres of identical claims.
Despite such unfair competition the more persevering among the amateur prospectors, climbing over the landscape with their cheap little Geiger counters in hand, sometimes succeeded in finding a source of radiation all their own. The next step was to stake a claim and have it filed with the county recorder. But now their problems were only beginning. Before they could raise the money to finance a mining operation it was necessary to have core samples taken in order to assay the quality and the extent of the uranium deposit. This meant first of all bulldozing a road into the claim; then if they had any money left or could borrow more they had to hire or lease a drilling rig. All very expensive procedures. If the drilling proved out they might be ready to go into business. Or might not, depending upon still other factors, such as the expense of trucking the ore from mine to mill.
The A.E.C. provided a guaranteed market at a guaranteed price for a period of ten years beginning in 1949 for all of the uranium ore—at or above a specified grade—which the miners could produce. Plus a discovery bonus of ten thousand dollars. But even so it became apparent after a time that only large-scale operations—in this as in most other businesses—would make a profit. Also the many small ore pockets scattered about the canyon country were soon made insignificant by the location of vast contiguous bodies of uranium in the Ambrosia Lake district of New Mexico and in Ontario. The small independent miners in Utah, forced to transport their ore long distances over the tire-busting, axle-breaking, clutch-burning terrain of the canyonlands (where roads run every way but straight), found themselves up against the overwhelming competition of such giants as the Anaconda Corporation, with generals and admirals on its governing board and senators on the invisible payroll. When the A.E.C.’s ten-year guarantee ran out most of the independents went out with it—out of business.
There must have been many who were glad to quit. For in addition to the unnumbered exasperations and frustrations which plague the small businessman, and the customary hazards of work in a mine, suggestions of another danger—nuclear radiation—could not be entirely ignored. The uranium miner down deep in his burrow was not only inhaling rock dust every minute and working daily with dynamite, his body was absorbing far more than the usual dosage of alpha, beta and gamma rays. The miner would disregard this danger, so vague, theoretical and intangible (to him), but for the rest of his life whenever he became sick or his health seemed to be ebbing he might remember and wonder about the rumors he had heard years before in the bars and machine shops of Moab, Monticello, Mexican Hat, Green River. Those hot, dusty, strange and isolated little towns set so far apart from one another, so far from anywhere, in the middle of silence and emptiness and burning rock.
Whatever the cost, there was for all who took part the zest of gambling and the exhilaration of adventure into unknown or little-known territory. For a few an adventure which became a nightmare:
Two men, for example, greenhorn treasure-seekers, went down the Colorado in a small motorboat overloaded with canned goods, ore samples, hammers, Geiger counters. When they reached the junction with the Green River something went wrong; the mot
or failed and they drifted helplessly into the forty-mile millrace of Cataract Canyon, a place where they had not planned to go. Nearly a century before Major Powell, the first man to go through and write about it, described a portion of Cataract Canyon as follows:
July 24, 1869.—We examine the rapids below. Large rocks have fallen from the walls—great, angular blocks which have rolled down the talus and are strewn along the channel. We are compelled to make three portages in succession, the distance being less than three fourths of a mile, with a fall of 75 feet. Among these rocks, in chutes, whirlpools and great waves, with rushing breakers and foam, the water finds its way, still tumbling down. We stop for the night only three fourths of a mile below the last camp.… Darkness is coming on; but the waves are rolling with crests of foam so white they almost give a light of their own. Near by, a chute of water strikes the foot of a great block of limestone 50 feet high, and the waters pile up against it and roll back. Where there are sunken rocks the water heaps up in mounds or even in cones. At a point where rocks come very near the surface, the water forms a chute above, strikes, and is shot up 10 or 15 feet, and piles back in gentle curves, as in a fountain; and on the river tumbles and roars.
The two prospectors never got through at all. Near the very beginning their boat overturned, cast them out, and went down the river on its own. The men managed to get ashore still alive. But they could not agree on the best way back to human settlement. One hiked up a side canyon and struck off west across-country toward the hamlet of Hanksville, some forty miles away by airline. The second man, thinking it wiser to stay close to water, trudged northeast along the Colorado back toward Moab, their starting point. He had twice as far to go, taking into account the meanders of the river, but was in no danger of dying from thirst. Neither had any food.
But the first man had all the luck. Soon after the organized search began he was spotted from the air and promptly rescued. While his former comrade struggled on mile after mile and day after day through the willow thickets and over the talus debris on the river’s shore. Search parties in powerboats cruised down the river and back again but incredibly failed to see him. He saw them but was too exhausted to shout, lacked matches to start a fire, and apparently was too frightened or too delirious to stay at one spot and construct some kind of distress signal. “They never looked in the right direction,” he would later explain, bitterly. And therefore crawled on over the rocks under the desert sun. Now and then catching a lizard which he ate raw and whole. “Tasted like tuna,” he reported. Finally he was discovered ten days after the search began near an abandoned miner’s shack below Dead Horse Point. They found him sitting on the ground hammering feebly at an ancient can of beans, trying to open the can with a stone. Hospitalized for exposure, shock and malnutrition, he urged that the entrance to Cataract Canyon be somehow chained off, closed forever to human exploration.
(Some present-day Moabites have suggested that the Federal Government take atomic bombs and blast a straight deep channel through Cataract Canyon so that they—the Moabites—can pilot their new cabin cruisers without hazard all the way down to the new Glen Canyon reservoir.)
In all those years of feverish struggle, buying and selling, cheating and swindling, isolation, loneliness, hardship, danger, sudden fortune and sudden disaster, there is one question about this search for the radiant treasure—the hidden splendor—which nobody ever asked. It is necessary, therefore, to relate one more story concerning the uranium strike, a story based on events which may or may not have actually happened but which all who tell it will swear is true:
Among the thousands drawn to the canyon country by the publicity of the boom was one Albert T. Husk of Star Route 2, Box 17, Flat Rock, Texas. He brought with him his young and pleasant-looking (if somewhat thin and anxious) second wife, his eleven-year-old son Billy-Joe, and two little girls younger than the boy. He had left behind a seventy-acre farm in the East Texas pinelands, a Fordson tractor and lesser implements, two purebred Blue Tick coondogs and his father, A. T. Husk Senior, to look after things. All except the old man had been mortgaged to finance the hunt for new wealth and a new life. For Albert Husk was a man of vision.
The Husk family rattled into Moab one blazing hot day in June riding in a jeep pickup which looked as if it had been rolled down a mountainside and towing without safety chain an antique housetrailer of the type which only sheepherders live in these days: plywood and tarpaper, a thin coat of aluminum paint, tires worn down to the threads (purchased from and guaranteed by a dealer in Lubbock named Sharpe). Husk found a vacant spot in the mouth of Courthouse Wash where, under a splendid cottonwood tree, he set up his base camp. There was a spring nearby, with a pool below it large as a bathtub where his new wife could bathe and wash her flaxen hair. With two charges of blasting powder (one of which failed to go off) Husk excavated a pit toilet in the alluvium (he was in a hurry) and slung a tent over it. The Baptist Church was only five miles away in the heart of downtown Moab behind T. C. Tracey’s gas station but once his family had been established in their new home Husk—a somewhat indifferent Christian—went straight to the Club 66, where the smoke-dense air crackled with radioactivity and the smell of honest miners’ sweat. Here he met his benefactor, a man known as Charles “Chuck” Graham. Or Ingraham—the name has been obscured by the many variants of the narrative.
Mr. Graham like Husk was also a newcomer to the Moab area, though not so new as the latter. In fact he was already pretty well dug in. He owned a flying service—light planes and helicopters for hire or charter—carried a pilot’s license, and operated as well the only car- and truck-rental agency in town. An affable and helpful man, he quickly engaged Husk in a friendly conversation at the bar. From the bar they moved to a table in the corner where Mr. Graham produced a large tectonic map and explained to Husk as well as he could (for Husk had only the dimmest notions of geology) what the prospects were for making fresh uranium discoveries in the Colorado Plateau.
It was soon made apparent to Husk that the better possibilities were already firmly tied up in claims and developments. Mr. Graham advised Husk that it might be wiser in the long run to return to Flat Rock and redeem his farm rather than risk his (no doubt limited) assets in what would probably be a fruitless search for a fool’s treasure.
Husk allowed that the odds were against him but declared fervently, over the second pitcher of beer, that he wasn’t about to go all the way back to East Texas without even giving his luck a try. Mr. Graham then suggested to Husk that better than rambling off half-cocked into the outback he should buy into a partnership with somebody who already controlled a likely group of claims.
Husk requesting further information, Mr. Graham reluctantly conceded that he himself had a few such properties, including a very promising group of uranium claims along the San Rafael River. Mr. Graham explained that he planned to develop the claims himself sooner or later but that the press of his other business had so far made it impossible; he would therefore be willing to take in a partner if the partner commenced the necessary location work.
Husk was willing, even eager, and inquired as to the terms. Mr. Graham however insisted that Husk think it over and have a look at the claims before they discussed pecuniary details; he wanted Husk to be quite certain beforehand that he was getting his money’s worth. He did not, he explained, wish to see any friend of his get into something over his head.
Husk smiled and showed Mr. Graham the corner of a cashier’s check from a bank in Flat Rock. He wasn’t rich, he said, but he could take care of himself. Mr. Graham frowned and cautioned Husk against displaying his funds too openly in a place like the Club 66. Mormons, he implied, have few compunctions about separating a Gentile from his money. Husk said that Mr. Graham was a genuine Christian gentleman if he ever seen one and invited him home to meet the wife and kids. Mr. Graham accepted. Husk reeled out of the bar into the blinding sunlight, Mr. Graham following, and after some confusion led the way to the camp in Courthouse Wash.
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p; Mrs. Husk was pleased to make his acquaintance and the children also took to Mr. Graham at once except for Billy-Joe who was a very shy boy. Mr. Graham showed him his pilot’s license and that helped a little. Certainly Mrs. Husk was impressed. She invited Mr. Graham to stay for supper and he did. He particularly enjoyed the mucilaginous green pods of the okra which Mrs. Husk had prepared, remarking that he’d been practically raised on that vegetable back in Oklahoma during his boyhood. He offered Mrs. Husk a cigarette and lit it for her with his slim butane lighter. Later the children showed him the pool up in the canyon below the spring. An owl hooted softly; and little hog-nosed bats zigzagged through the twilight.
Before leaving for the night Mr. Graham and Husk agreed to meet the next morning for an inspection trip by air to the claims on the San Rafael. When he was gone the Husk family discussed their new friend and all agreed that he seemed like a very fine person, again except for the boy who thought he “smiled too much.”
The flight over the canyons next day was a success, though Husk who’d never been up in an airplane before got slightly airsick on the return. In order to land, Mr. Graham had to make three passes over the unpaved airstrip before some browsing cattle would get out of the runway. But during the flight over the canyons he had shown Husk not only his own properties but also several small uranium mines in the vicinity actually in operation: yes, Husk could see for himself the test holes, the adits and tailings, the winding jeep roads along the verge of dizzy ledges. And as they flew over the claims Mr. Graham switched on the scintillometer wired to a case of storage batteries which he carried in the plane and pointed out to Husk the pointer readings on the dials, indicative he explained of radioactive minerals somewhere in the mesa below. It would be his partner’s job, on the ground, to locate those deposits precisely.