Navajo Indians were hired to assist the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission in locating uranium deposits

The employment of Navajo Indians by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to prospect for uranium during the uranium boom of the 1950’s was mentioned in an article by the AEC's Robert D. Nininger in a 1954 volume of the National Geographic Magazine (Nininger, 1954, p. 550). There are no further details of this program in the literature. Having worked on the Navajo Nation for 10 years in the 1950's and 1960's I was aware of the program and I am preparing this report from my old field notes etc. BACKGROUND Early in 1949, two Navajo's, Koley Black and Dan Phillips, showed Dan Hayes, a prospector from Monticello, Utah, some brightly colored outcrops of uranium and vanadium minerals on the northern side of the Lukachukai Mountains in Apache County, Arizona. A short time later, Willie Cisco discovered a mineralized outcrop on the southern side of the mountains. The host rocks for these discoveries were sandstone beds in the Salt Wash Member of the Morrison Formation of Jurassic age. These discoveries would lead to development of mines in an area where no previous mining had taken place. At the time of the discoveries in the Lukachukai Mountains, uranium mining on the Navajo Indian Reservation was taking place in the Carrizo Mountains of northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. These deposits were also in the Salt Wash Member of the Morrison Formation. Deposits were also being mined in the Monument Valley area of Apache and Navajo Counties, Arizona and in San Juan County, Utah. These deposits occurred in the Shinarump Member of the Triassic Chinle Formation.Documents 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