Slick Rock Mill Site, Colorado

Two adjacent uranium mills operated here and have been mostly erased, as part of the federal government’s Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act (UMTRCA). What is know today as Slick Rock East was the first mill here, built in 1931, which was used to extract radium salts and vanadium. In 1945 the site was one of several mills taken over by the federal government to supply uranium for the Manhattan Project. Union Carbide took over the mill in 1957, ultimately electing to close it in the early 1960s. Less than a mile away, Slick Rock West was the site of another uranium mill, built by Union Carbide in 1957, and closed in 1961.  The DOE began clean up of both mill sites in 1995, and recontoured and reseeded the grounds. The buildings and tailings were relocated to a disposal site, the Burro Canyon disposal cell, five miles away.