| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Yellowcake Towns: Uranium Mining Communities in the American West. By Michael A. Amundson. (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2002. xxvi, 204 pp. $24.95, ISBN 0-87081-662-4.)

Yellowcake is the atomic energy industry's term for processed uranium ore. The four towns under study here—Grants, New Mexico; Moab, Utah; Jeffrey City, Wyoming; and Uravan, Colorado—were all yellowcake communities, mining and milling uranium ore, booming and busting with a market controlled by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Many western mine towns went through similar cycles of discovery, development, and collapse as ore gave out, capital failed, or demand disappeared. Likewise, many western towns found themselves colonial dependents on policies made in Washington. But few towns were as doubly dependent as these four. AEC policy aimed to maintain only enough yellowcake to meet the needs of national security and nuclear power plants. Eased Cold War tensions would reduce need. So would increased public fears of radioactive pollution. When production slowed and ultimately ceased, Grants and Moab could survive and ultimately thrive by returning to farming and ranching and by aggressively diversifying into tourism. But one-industry uranium towns could not, and grass would grow in the streets of Jeffrey City while Uravan became a Superfund site.

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