Charles Steen

thumb|Charles A. Steen (1919-2006)

Charles Augustus Steen (December 1, 1919 – January 1, 2006) was a geologist who made and lost a fortune after discovering a rich uranium deposit in Utah during the uranium boom of the early 1950s.

Early years

Charlie Steen was born in 1919 in Caddo, Stephens County, Texas, the son of Charles A. and Rosalie Wilson Steen, and attended high school in Houston. As a teen Steen worked summers for a construction company that helped finance his education; this is the same company that his first stepfather Lisle had died working at. He went on to study at John Tarleton Agricultural College in Stephenville, Texas, 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 Bachelor of Arts degree in geology in 1943.

Ineligible for the draft because of his poor eyesight, Steen spent World War II working as a petroleum geologist in the Amazon Basin of Bolivia and Peru. Returning to Texas in 1945, he married Minnie Lee ("M.L."). He started graduate school at the University of Chicago but after a year returned to Houston to take a job doing field work for the Standard Oil Company of Indiana. However, within two years he had been fired for insubordination and had trouble getting a job as a geologist anywhere in the oil industry.

Mi Vida uranium deposit

thumb|upright|Steen the day after the discovery at "Mi Vida"

On July 6, 1952, Steen reached uranium, however he didn't realize until three weeks later. He was drilling down through the layers of sandstone 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 and decided to have the core tested by a friend with a Geiger counter 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, the claim was named the "Mi Vida" mine (My Life) by Steen. 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 region, similar to the Gold Rush of the 1850s in California.

thumb|Steen's $11 million Uranium Reduction Co. ([[Moab uranium mill tailings pile|Atlas Mill), Moab, Utah]]

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 because the structure 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 in his private plane for weekly 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 in 1958 as a Republican, but quickly became disillusioned with politics. He resigned from office in 1961 and moved to a ranch near Reno, Nevada, building a 27,000 square foot (2,500 m<sup>2</sup>) mansion near the residence of the Comstock millionaire miner, Sandy Bowers. He sold the Utex Exploration Company and the Uranium Reduction Company in 1962.

Death

Long-suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Steen died on January 1, 2006, in Loveland, Colorado. 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 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, 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 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 east of the marker.

References

External links

Steen: A legend in his own time
National Mining Hall of Fame inductee bio
Moab Historical Museum