Charles Steen
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Charles Augustus Steen (December 1, 1919 – January 1, 2006) was a
geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, althou ...
who made and lost a fortune after discovering a rich
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 ...
deposit in
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 ...
during the uranium boom of the early 1950s.


Early years

Charlie Steen was born in 1919 in
Caddo, Stephens County, Texas Caddo is an Unincorporated area, unincorporated community in Stephens County, Texas. According to the ''Handbook of Texas'', the community had an estimated population of 40 in 2000. Caddo has a post office, with the ZIP code of 76429. Geography Ca ...
, the son of Charles A. and Rosalie Wilson Steen, and attended high school in
Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
. As a teen Steen worked summers for a
construction Construction is a general term meaning the art and science to form objects, systems, or organizations,"Construction" def. 1.a. 1.b. and 1.c. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) Oxford University Press 2009 and com ...
company that helped
finance Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...
his education, this is the same
company A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...
that his first stepfather Lisle had died working at. He went on to study at John Tarleton Agricultural College in
Stephenville, Texas Stephenville is a city in and the county seat of Erath County, Texas, United States. It is on the North Bosque River, which forms nearby. Founded in 1854, it is home to Tarleton State University. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was ...
where he met his wife Minnie Lee Holland, and in 1940 transferred to the College of Mines and Metallurgy of the University of Texas, receiving a
B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
in
geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...
in 1943. Ineligible for the draft because of his poor eyesight, Steen spent
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
working as a petroleum geologist in the
Amazon Basin The Amazon basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries. The Amazon drainage basin covers an area of about , or about 35.5 percent of the South American continent. It is located in the countries of Bolivi ...
of
Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
and
Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...
. Returning to Texas in 1945, he married Minnie Lee ("M.L."). He started graduate school at the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
but after a year returned to Houston to take a job doing field work for the
Standard Oil Company Standard Oil Company, Inc., was an American oil production, transportation, refining, and marketing company that operated from 1870 to 1911. At its height, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its co-f ...
of
Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...
. However, within two years he had been fired for insubordination and had trouble getting any job as a geologist anywhere in the oil industry.


The uranium boom

While unemployed, Steen read in the
December 1949 The following events occurred in December 1949: December 1, 1949 (Thursday) *The UN General Assembly adopted by a vote of 53 to 5 a resolution to observe the UN charter and their treaties faithfully as the best guarantee of peace. All five diss ...
issue of ''The Engineering and Mining Journal'' that the
United States federal government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 ...
had issued incentives for domestic
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 ...
prospectors. Under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President ...
had the authority to withdraw lands from the private sector in order to examine them as possible sites for uranium mining. During World War II, the
Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...
had received most of its uranium from foreign sources in
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and the
Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colo ...
. However, it had also received some from
vanadium Vanadium is a chemical element with the symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an oxide layer ( pas ...
miners in the
American Southwest The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, N ...
, where uranium was often a by-product of mining (before the atomic bomb uranium was not a valuable metal). There was a concern that the United States would not have enough domestic supply of uranium for its
nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...
s program. In the late 1940s and early 1950s the Atomic Energy Commission established itself as the only legal buyer of uranium in the U.S. and artificially manipulated prices to reflect their current uranium needs. By raising the price of uranium, they created an incentive for prospectors in the
Four Corners The Four Corners is a region of the Southwestern United States consisting of the southwestern corner of Colorado, southeastern corner of Utah, northeastern corner of Arizona, and northwestern corner of New Mexico. The Four Corners area ...
region. Despite the fact that his three sons, Johnny, Andy and Charles Jr. were all less than four years old and his wife was expecting another child, Steen borrowed $1,000 from his mother and headed for the
Colorado Plateau The Colorado Plateau, also known as the Colorado Plateau Province, is a physiographic and desert region of the Intermontane Plateaus, roughly centered on the Four Corners region of the southwestern United States. This province covers an area of ...
, determined to strike it rich. After being in Colorado for several months the Steens moved into a tarpaper shack in
Cisco, Utah Cisco is a ghost town in Grand County, Utah, United States near the junction of State Route 128 (SR‑128) and Interstate 70 (I‑70). History The town started in the 1880s as a saloon and water-refilling station for the Denver and Rio Grande We ...
. Steen and his family were struggling to get by and were often hungry so Charlie made the decision to move his family to
Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...
. Steen worked as a carpenter in Tucson for about a year before he returned to his claims in Utah. He and his family once again packed up and headed to their
claims Claim may refer to: * Claim (legal) * Claim of Right Act 1689 * Claims-based identity * Claim (philosophy) * Land claim * A ''main contention'', see conclusion of law * Patent claim * The assertion of a proposition; see Douglas N. Walton * A righ ...
. This final trip back to Utah would be the most detrimental for the family because M.L. Steen's wife contracted
pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...
, and her medical bills consumed the $350 remaining from the sale of Steen's trailer. Steen could not afford the standard
radiation In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'', such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visi ...
-detecting equipment used by uranium prospectors - the
Geiger counter A Geiger counter (also known as a Geiger–Müller counter) is an electronic instrument used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation. It is widely used in applications such as radiation dosimetry, radiological protection, experimental ph ...
. Instead, he used a secondhand diamond drill rig and his geologic training for his prospecting. At the time, each prospector had his own idiosyncratic theory about where to find uranium. The uranium industry was composed primarily of individual prospectors and geologists who would attempt to find a large deposit and either mine it for themselves or mine it for a large company (such as
Union Carbide Union Carbide Corporation is an American chemical corporation wholly owned subsidiary (since February 6, 2001) by Dow Chemical Company. Union Carbide produces chemicals and polymers that undergo one or more further conversions by customers befor ...
) who would transport the ore from the mine to the uranium mill where it could be converted into
yellowcake Yellowcake (also called urania) is a type of uranium concentrate powder obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores. It is a step in the processing of uranium after it has been mined but before fue ...
. Steen's theory on uranium deposits was that they would collect in
anticlinal Anticlinal may refer to: *Anticline, in structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is convex up and has its oldest beds at its core. *Anticlinal, in stereochemistry, a torsion angle between 90° to 150°, and –90° to –150°; see Alkane_st ...
structures in the same manner as oil, which others on the Plateau dismissed as "Steen's Folly".


Mi Vida uranium deposit

On July 6, 1952, Steen hit it big but he didn't realize until three weeks later. He was drilling down through the layers of
sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...
when his drill bit broke off at a depth of 197 feet, just 3 feet short of his goal. Finding this massive deposit of uranium ore only became apparent when he took a piece of the blackish core he found while drilling weeks earlier back to Cisco. He stopped to fill up his
jeep Jeep is an American automobile marque, now owned by multi-national corporation Stellantis. Jeep has been part of Chrysler since 1987, when Chrysler acquired the Jeep brand, along with remaining assets, from its previous owner American Moto ...
and decided to have the core tested by a friend with a
Geiger counter A Geiger counter (also known as a Geiger–Müller counter) is an electronic instrument used for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation. It is widely used in applications such as radiation dosimetry, radiological protection, experimental ph ...
and they found that the piece made the Geiger counter needle fluctuate wildly. The high grade uranium deposit was located at Big Indian Wash of Lisbon Valley, southeast of Moab, Utah (). Sometimes recognized as one of the most important deposits of any kind found during the last century, Steen named the claim the "Mi Vida" mine (My Life). The Mi Vida mine was one of the first big strikes of the uranium boom. Steen made millions off his claims, and provoked a "Uranium Rush" of prospectors into the
Four Corners The Four Corners is a region of the Southwestern United States consisting of the southwestern corner of Colorado, southeastern corner of Utah, northeastern corner of Arizona, and northwestern corner of New Mexico. The Four Corners area ...
region, similar to the Gold Rush of the 1850s in California. In Moab, Steen built a $250,000 hilltop mansion to replace his tarpaper shack, with a swimming pool, greenhouse, and servants' quarters. the home he built still stands and has been transformed into a restaurant called The Sunset Grill named so because the house looks over the valley towards the sunset in the west. He also formed a number of companies to continue his uranium work, including the Utex Exploration Company, the Moab Drilling Company, the Mi Vida Company, Big Indian Mines, Inc., and later the Uranium Reduction Company. He made his money well known, inviting the entire population of Moab to annual parties in a local airport hangar, having his original worn prospecting boots bronzed, and flying to
Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...
in his private plane for weekly
rumba The term rumba may refer to a variety of unrelated music styles. Originally, "rumba" was used as a synonym for "party" in northern Cuba, and by the late 19th century it was used to denote the complex of secular music styles known as Cuban rumba ...
lessons. He donated $50,000 towards a new hospital in Moab and gave land for churches and schools.


Political involvement

Steen was elected to the
Utah State Senate The Utah State Senate is the upper house of the Utah State Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Utah. The Utah Senate is composed of 29 elected members representing an equal number of senate districts. Each senate district is ...
in 1958, but quickly became disillusioned with politics. He resigned from office in 1961 and moved to a ranch near
Reno, Nevada Reno ( ) is a city in the northwest section of the U.S. state of Nevada, along the Nevada-California border, about north from Lake Tahoe, known as "The Biggest Little City in the World". Known for its casino and tourism industry, Reno is the ...
, building a 27,000 square foot (2,500 m2) mansion near the residence of the Comstock millionaire miner, Sandy Bowers. He sold the Utex Exploration Company and the Uranium Reduction Company in 1962.


After the uranium rush

By the late 1950s, the US government had enough uranium for its needs and had stopped supporting high prices of the ore, killing the market by 1960. Steen attempted to diversify his interests by investing in
Arabian horse The Arabian or Arab horse ( ar, الحصان العربي , DIN 31635, DMG ''ḥiṣān ʿarabī'') is a horse breed, breed of horse that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. With a distinctive head shape and high tail carriage, the Arabian is ...
breeding, a
marble Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite. Marble is typically not Foliation (geology), foliated (layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the ...
quarry, an airplane factory, a pickle plant, and real estate. He met with financial losses and misfortune. In 1968 he filed for
bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...
after the
Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory ta ...
seized his assets to pay
back taxes Back taxes is a term for taxes that were not completely paid when due. Typically, these are taxes that are owed from a previous year. Causes for back taxes include failure to pay taxes by the deadline, failure to correctly report one's income, or n ...
. In 1971 he suffered a severe head injury working on a
copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
prospect.


Death

Long suffering from
Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...
, Steen died on January 1, 2006, in
Loveland, Colorado The City of Loveland is the home rule municipality that is the second most populous municipality in Larimer County, Colorado, United States. Loveland is situated north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver and is the 14th most populous city ...
. Minnie Lee died on July 14, 1997. Their ashes were scattered at the Mi Vida mine site.


Legacy

Steen's legacy lives on through his four sons who were once the recipients of a $130 million fortune that their father lost after the decline of the uranium market in the late 1950s. Although Steen lost most of his fortune after the uranium crash due to poor money management and frivolous spending, he is still recognized for his
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
contributions for supplying the United States with all of the uranium it needed for its weapons program. His story about finding the Mi Vida mine inspired two films and several books along with getting the small desert town of
Moab, Utah Moab () is the largest city and county seat of Grand County in eastern Utah in the western United States, known for its dramatic scenery. The population was 5,366 at the 2020 census. Moab attracts many tourists annually, mostly visitors to th ...
on the map as "The Uranium Capital of the World" and the "Richest Town in America". After Steen struck it rich he requested that congress allow him to build his own
mill Mill may refer to: Science and technology * * Mill (grinding) * Milling (machining) * Millwork * Textile mill * Steel mill, a factory for the manufacture of steel * List of types of mill * Mill, the arithmetic unit of the Analytical Engine early ...
without government funding, resulting in the only major atomic facility to be privately funded. On November 4, 2016, a historical marker commemorating the Lisbon Valley's uranium heritage and noting Charlie Steen's discovery was dedicated on the Anticline Overlook road off U.S. 191. The marker was funded entirely by private donations. Artist Michael Ford Dunton created an arch to frame the historical marker and the view to the location of the Mi Vida mine, seven miles to the east of the marker.


See also

* Moab uranium mill tailings pile *
Uranium mining in Utah Uranium mining in Utah, a state of the United States, has a history going back more than 100 years. Uranium mining started as a byproduct of vanadium mining about 1900, became a byproduct of radium mining about 1910, then back to a byproduct of va ...


References


Further reading

* * * * * * * *


External links


Steen: A legend in his own time National Mining Hall of Fame inductee bioMoab Historical Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Steen, Charles 20th-century American geologists American mining businesspeople Utah state senators University of Texas at El Paso alumni 1919 births 2006 deaths Deaths from Alzheimer's disease Neurological disease deaths in Colorado University of Chicago alumni 20th-century American politicians People from Stephens County, Texas