The Exploration and Production History of the Black and Blackwater Uranium-Vanadium Mines, Monument Valley, Apache County, Arizona

In 1950, two Monument Valley Navajos, Jessie Black and Harvey Blackwater, determined that the ground claimed by Cato Sells did not completely surround Vanadium Corporation of America's (YCA) 1943 Monument No.2 lease in northwestern Apache County, Arizona. This lease was originally mined for vanadium and was now being mined for uranium and vanadium. This report is to document the production history of the mining on Black and Blackwater's Navajo Tribal Mining Permit. Location The Monument No.2 mine area is located in the extreme northwestern area of Apache County, Arizona (Figure 1). The mine is in the Cane Valley on the eastern flank of the Monument Uplift. Access to the mine area was via a 19-mile dirt road that headed south from U.S. Highway 163 one mile south of the bridge over the San Juan River at Mexican Hat, Utah. Another access road went from the mine, over Comb Ridge, and connected to U.S. Highway 160 near Mexican Water, Arizona. The Monument No.2 open pit mine is shown at the center of the right margin of Rooster Rock topographic quadrangle (USGS, 1988).Originally prepared for the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources and the Navajo Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation ProjectDocuments in the AZGS Document Repository collection are made available by the Arizona Geological Survey (AZGS) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact azgs-info@email.arizona.edu