Fry Canyon was a small community in
San Juan County,
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
, United States, located in Fry Canyon, just south of
White Canyon, west on
State Route 95 from its junction with
U.S. Route 191
U.S. Route 191 (US 191) is a spur of U.S. Route 91 that has two branches. The southern branch runs for from Douglas, Arizona on the Mexican border to the southern part of Yellowstone National Park. The northern branch runs for from the north ...
at
Blanding.
Description
Fry Canyon was a
uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
boom town
A boomtown is a community that undergoes sudden and rapid population and economic growth, or that is started from scratch. The growth is normally attributed to the nearby discovery of a precious resource such as gold, silver, or oil, although t ...
during the 1950s, and the Fry Canyon Lodge opened in 1955, but it has since closed in 2007. The tiny
hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
, now a
ghost town
Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to:
* Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned
Film and television
* Ghost Town (1936 film), ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser
* Ghost Town (1956 film), ''Ghost Town'' ...
, is west-southwest of Woodenshoe Butte, and west-northwest of
Natural Bridges National Monument
Natural Bridges National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located about northwest of the Four Corners boundary of southeast Utah, in the western United States, at the junction of White Canyon and Armstrong Canyon, part of the Colorado ...
.
The activities of a uranium ore upgrader mill (1957-1960) and a subsequent copper heap leach operation (1963-1968) at Fry Spring, two miles southeast of Fry Canyon, caused uranium, copper and radium contamination of groundwater in colluvial channel deposits within Fry Creek. The
U.S. Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and ...
(with funding from the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other agencies) installed three permeable reactive barriers, containing three different reactive materials (foamed zero-valent iron (ZVI) pellets, bone charcoal pellets, amorphous ferric oxyhydroxide (AFO) slurry mixed with pea gravel), at the site, which is managed by the U.S.
Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...
.
See also
*
List of ghost towns in Utah
References
External links
Mining communities in Utah
Ghost towns in Utah
Ghost towns in San Juan County, Utah
{{Utah-geo-stub