Uranium Fever (1955)

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uranium is where you find it in our Atomic Age uranium is far more precious than gold and I'd caught uranium fever prospecting for this elusive treasure is hard lonely work and dangerous it's made bearable only by constant hope hope that one day your Geiger counter will record your big strike I'm Raymond Taylor real estate man I was covering plenty of real estate these days this could be it it was but someone else's claim sometimes you think the whole country was staked I was part of the great uranium stampede in the Colorado Plateau we're Utah Colorado New Mexico and Arizona meet in the famous four corners area it's desolate broken country this vast wastelands it holds the sinister secrets of the atom valueless till now but today we prospectors are opening it up a land never completely explored electronic instruments to detect invisible radiations have replaced the pick and shovel in the gold pan under scientific assault the plateau is gradually revealing it's rich ever stand on a fortune in uranium these men are anyone might find uranium newcomer or descendant of the original property owners even old timers have the fever he may come back in a Cadillac a man with uranium fever wouldn't think of driving anywhere without having his Geiger counter turned on it looks like this man's found something it's uranium all right but it's secondhand where man can't drive or take a horse or burro or even walk he prospects by air not only man she is as a scintillator even more sensitive and of greater range than the familiar Geiger counter radiation detectors vary in power and in price you can spend $50 or as much as 5000 scintillators can also be used from small planes to detect radiation no matter what the season uranium prospecting is a full-time job [Music] for me it began about a year ago a friend phoned he'd found uranium and offered to cut me in I met him at house Rock Valley it's all very hush-hush my friend was giving me first chance to stake adjoining claims before the news got out then the usual Stampede started I was really getting in on a good thing yet somehow I couldn't help wondering whether I was becoming involved in just another uranium stock promotion deal place seemed hot enough the next day I staked my first claim what could I lose at a dollar filing fee I started back home I didn't get there something had happened to me this was too big and too exciting to leave I didn't know it then but I had uranium fever my first stop was Moab Utah uranium capital of America only yesterday a quiet mormon village today a boomtown here everybody talked uranium wild talk mostly especially if they hadn't found any yet a town of men in hope and women in furs and everybody in stock deals big deals I soon learned the value of my unproved claims he had all you wanted at $35 a piece there's not as much actual claim-jumping as in the old hoop law and hard rock days but there is some disagreement over who was there first it's usually a case of not filing right it leaves the situation open to argument occasionally things get serious fight can be pretty explosive when human nature mixes with uranium I saw uranium being mined it can be anywhere and practically any color and anyone might find them somebody found this beautiful is all staked there was nothing left for me here I returned to house Rock Valley looking for my own private big one not realizing how much I had learned meanwhile I kept staking claims on any sign of surface reaction wondering at the same time what I was doing out here winter caught me still wondering [Music] camping out used to be fun 25 years ago it's hard to believe that only last summer I'd been that other Raymond Taylor a satisfied moderately successful businessman three married children another in college once I was settled in my way of life here there wasn't any place to settle cheerful thought this place was beginning to look like a property owners convention finally I made my first big deal the number of papers I had a sign you'd have thought I was buying the Empire State Building she wasn't much for looks but to me she was home sweet home on wheels home my wife kept writing asking when I'd return from my vacation how could I tell her I didn't know myself the endless hunt went on I'd heard that the most likely places to look for uranium in this area were in three separate strata this is the mo incopy formation generally chocolate-brown rock this the Shannara the yellow gray capstone and the chin Lee of poisonous pastel shades here nothing grows petrified trees from some long-forgotten forest this one's hot but in the four corners everybody has a better Rock than yours and a better theory on paper they're all millionaires you can build your monuments and stake your claims but there's another factor Luck asked budge torrid about luck without even a Geiger counter he staked claims behind his service station and stands to make a fortune ask Blanton Burford about luck a printer from Dallas Texas Burford spent one year on the Colorado Plateau and made four million in uranium but Charlie steam is the big story a geologist who depended on knowledge and hard work he hunted uranium where the experts said it wasn't today Steen's holdings are worth more than 100 million dollars promoting all this activity is the Atomic Energy Commission the government needs uranium and helps you to find it as always the good old American incentive system works best for me there was enough incentive to try to duplicate the feats of a human fly one afternoon I managed to lower myself down to a Ledge getting back up proved quite a problem there was a lot I had to learn about climbing cliffs [Music] [Music] [Music] the situation called for a strategic retreat I spent a lonely night ledged up waiting til morning to find my way to that spring I was still at still learning the hard way I did discover the importance of water naturally the hard way water such a simple word for something so important you never really appreciate it till you're without it I'd been without it enough hours now to know I guess I must have smelled it it was and muddy enough to walk out who cared suddenly I did there was something funny here must have been the scenery was just a little too realistic [Music] the steer couldn't read I don't remember how much farther I walked but it was just about all I could take this time it had to be Mirage or water I actually managed to run it was water all right the stuff my dreams have been made of during these last days [Music] Kwikset the harder I fought the deeper I went [Music] one dry branch was the only thing between me and eternity I was still learning the hard way but learning like the day I found another location notice had been substituted for mine my claim was already on file at the County Recorder's it didn't make sense but the gun did he suggested I sign a quitclaim there refused I figured he was bluffing next morning I had an appointment at nine o'clock my friend was late he'd had an earlier appointment with some unknown gunmen [Music] they play for keeps in uranium the papers call this one the Geiger counter murder but the fever keeps you going then finally one day I found different-looking outcroppings I tested over a wide area still the same I'd really hit it I staked a series of clays I was in business but the law says you have to prove you're fined and cost money I thought I could raise it I couldn't I had seen development work on other people's claims drilling then probing to determine strength and size of ore deposits then comes mining [Music] I couldn't have raised enough money even for drilling let alone mining operations for mining you need heavy equipment sometimes a lot of it and unless you have capital to back you you just plain out a lot this is uranium ore piled up by the acre the H stands for high-grade ore that averages one percent uranium is worth around 94 dollars a ton ship ten trucks a day and with bonuses you're a millionaire in sixty days but what I needed was someone to risk that development money I borrowed from friends and relatives it wasn't nearly enough I wrote to all the uranium mining companies those that replied said no I'm sure they got hundreds of letters like mine I knew the statistics out of hundreds of thousands of claims filed less than 1% become operating mines these long weeks were my darkest at 50 I'd used all my savings borrowed to the limit now with success almost mine I prayed hard I kept prospecting trying to keep my mind off my own frustrations it looked like a low-flying prospectors plane maybe picked up my find on their instruments and coming in for a better look well just about everything else that happened somehow it didn't matter anymore [Music] if you're Raymond Taylor we want to talk to you but why Frank penny oh and Lloyd Lyon of Zion uranium were answering my letters in person they had money and equipment I had the claims we had a deal on a royalty basis we began the development work drilling test homes [Music] this was it at last I was working my own property it was up to fate now the probe counter would soon show whether I had a small surface outcropping or a deep vein we were getting near the payoff now then a low reading but it was there a large deep vein and I'd be a uranium millionaire a shallow outcropping and I'd be flat broke another victim of the uranium fever [Music] one way or another this would end my story and to you guys with a fever stirring in your blood I wish you luck you'll need it [Music]