April Clinic – April 21, 2025
Atomic-Age Narrow-Gauge: Uranium and the Rio Grande Southern Railroad
Steve Hart Biography
Steve Hart is a retired geological engineer who worked at a number of radioactive remediation sites—mines, mills, and processing plants. One UMTRA project was the 1881 lead-silver Durango Smelter, which was converted into a vanadium- uranium mill in the 1930s. Another was the Denver Radium Sites Superfund Project, which cleaned up 40 WWI-vintage “Radium Boom” sites.
Only a year after the Rio Grande Southern Railroad’s completion, which provided access to the rich silver mines of Telluride and Rico, the Silver Crash of 1893 impacted everyone in Colorado. However, only 5 years later, Mme. Marie Curie isolated radium from Austrian pitchblende uranium ore. The same year, samples of yellow ore were sent from Montrose, Colorado, to France for analysis by French chemists. The ore was identified as radioactive and contained uranium, vanadium, and radium. The French named the ore “carnotite” after French Inspector of Mines Adolphe Carnot. Research before the turn of the century indicated that radium could be used in the treatment of cancer.
The Colorado Plateau contained most of the uranium and vanadium resources of the United States, primarily in the Uravan Mineral Belt of SW Colorado and SE Utah. And the RGS was the railroad line nearest the uranium mines! In 1911, Standard Chemical Co. of Pennsylvania built a mill and company town named Uravan, short for uranium and vanadium, on the San Miguel River. The Primos Chemical Company built a vanadium mill at “Vanadium”. The nearest railroad station to both was Placerville, which became the trans-shipping point for all traffic to and from the Paradox Valley. The “Colorado Radium Boom” ended in 1923 due to rich ore from the Belgian Congo that dropped prices by 50%. The deposit was kept secret during the war because Germany had overrun Belgium and their troops in German East Africa were adjacent to the Congo border. The Uravan Mineral Belt was rapidly abandoned by the uranium companies.
However, a new boom—vanadium mining and milling—began in 1936 due to the need for steel alloys for naval and tank armor plate for the coming war. This new boom then morphed into a top-secret uranium project after the Manhattan Project began in 1942. In 1948, Federal uranium price supports began, but the RGS benefited little because 300 miles of road had been built into the uranium mining region during WWII. The demise of the RGS came in 1952, just as the famous new “Uranium Boom” began.
May Clinic – May 19, 2025
The Missouri Pacific Railroad in Colorado
Bob Hochstetter Biography
General dentist for seven years. Then a prosthodontist (specialist) for 30 years. Retired from the Department of Veterans Affairs where he treated mostly injured and retired veterans. After retirement, he worked at Caboose Hobbies doing N scale and Z scale repairs and decoder installations for seven years until the store’s closure. Followed by volunteering for 6 years doing income tax returns for moderate to low-income individuals 55 years and older for AARP Tax-Aide.
Clinic On Hold – Waiting on Date
History of the Denver Tramway Streetcar .04
Wally Weart will present the above-mentioned Clinic. This was the last streetcar to operate in revenue in Denver, and it had several narrow escapes during its life. One of its escapes was the conversion from standard gauge to a narrow-gauge electric streetcar. Wally will add some history of the Denver Tramway network along with some additional pictures he has accumulated. Wally is a long-time member of the Front Range Division and the NMRA.
