| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.4

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Yellowcake Towns: Uranium Mining Communities in the American West. By Michael A. Amundson. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002. xxiv + 204 pp. Illustrations, maps notes, bibliography, index. $24.95.)

This concise but highly informative monograph examines the emergence and decline of four uranium mining and milling communities that typified the military-industrial colonization of the American West during the Cold War Era. With the United States monopolization of atomic energy in 1945, continued national dependency on foreign-produced uranium was unacceptable. The federal government's resolve to establish a sustainable domestic uranium program transformed some preexisting communities of the hinterland West into productive boomtowns. At the same time, government entities combined with corporate giants to create "company towns" in uranium-rich corners of the West. In each instance, the abundance or depletion of uranium ore dictated the success or failure of municipal development. Moab, Utah, and Grants, New Mexico, were long established municipalities. In contrast, Uravan, Colorado, and Jeffrey, Wyoming, were created and controlled in response to corporate necessity. Subsequent recoveries of massive deposits of radioactive ore for conversion into uranium concentrate identified them all as "yellowcake" towns. As such, federal legislation, corporate policy, domestic consumption, environmental change, and foreign competition determined the future of these communities for several decades.

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