Mining the Grand Canyon to Save It:
The Orphan Lode Uranium Mine and National Security

Michael A. Amundson

The Orphan Lode Uranium Mine, on the Grand Canyon's South Rim, offers a case study of the changing definition of national security in the Cold War American West. At the nexus of changing environmental, economic, energy, and national defense values, the mine's history complicates current views on nuclearism, interregional colonialism, and resource exploitation in national parks.

Along Grand Canyon National Park's West Rim drive, visitors on the footpath encounter a strange object just to the east of the John Wesley Powell marker. Rising near Maricopa Point is the head frame of the old Orphan Lode Mine. Surrounded by a tall chain link fence, the site was ringed until recently by small "Caution: Radioactive Area" signs. These warnings only hint that the Orphan once was one of the nation's richest uranium mines, operating on an inholding. But the signs do not indicate that during the months prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Orphan became the focal point of an unusual lobbying effort that united northern Arizona boosters, Navajo leaders, and environmentalists urging Congress to allow expansion of the mine into the national park itself to ensure uranium supplies for national security, economic well-being for northern Arizona, and, ironically, scenic protection for the Grand Canyon. This unusual story represents several important themes in the Cold War American West including the changing role of national security, the complexities of interregional colonialism, and resource exploitation in national parks.1     Radiation Sign on Fence at Orphan Mine Site. Photo Michael Amundson, 1998.

1

Traditionally defined as national defense, national security has broadened since World War II to include economic, energy, and environmental factors. In the American West, these new factors have sometimes conflicted, sometimes coalesced, as the region has tried to maintain the explosive growth of the Second World War. Economic security--the ability to provide a rising standard of living for the population as a whole while maintaining independence from foreign economic coercion--oftentimes has meant growth at any cost and has been supported by local chambers of commerce or what Hal Rothman calls the "growth coalition."2 Likewise energy security--the ability to assure adequate, reliable supplies of energy at reasonable prices--has repeatedly opened the West to oil, natural gas, coal, oil shale, and uranium exploration. Like economic security, energy security oftentimes has been backed by local growth coalitions and financed by eastern companies creating a new resource colonialism.3 Finally, environmental security--any environmental threat that could degrade the quality of life or narrow the policy choices of a state--often has countered local development as activists worked to preserve natural conditions.4 Together, these new factors have made the West into a national security battleground.

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