Durango Uranium Mill Site, Colorado

The Durango Uranium Mill was one of two uranium recovery plants in Colorado set up secretly in 1943 to produce uranium for the Manhattan Project. Uranium from this site, and the other in Uravan, was shipped to the new secret refinery in Grand Junction, now the DOE's Grand Junction Lab. This uranium processing plant, near its mine source, continued to operate decades after the war, and is undergoing clean-up as part of the federal Uranium Mill Tailings Remediation Act Project. The site covers approximately 120 acres, and has two nearby associated sites: another portion of the former mill a half mile south, and the Durango Bodo Canyon Disposal Site, a mile and a half southwest of town, where the contamination from the mill is entombed.