Bob Gregory reports that the first uranium discovery in Wyoming was at the Silver Cliff Mine near Lusk. This mine was first developed in 1879 for silver and copper but failed to produce much ore. In 1918, prospectors discovered radium at Silver Cliff, which was the first reported uranium discovery in Wyoming. Radium, a radiogenic daughter product of uranium, was in demand for scientific research purposes, particularly by Marie Curie. Ore samples were shipped to Curie in France from Wyoming and Colorado. She named the ore mineral carnotite after the French Inspector General of Mines, Marie-Adolphe Carnot. The most famous and significant uranium discovery in Wyoming was in 1951 by J.D. Love of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Love, along with geologists Dick Hose and F.B. Van Houten, was investigating radioactivity anomalies identified by airborne surveys. The team discovered a uranium deposit in the Pumpkin Buttes area of southwest Campbell County.
Love and his associates were excited about the discovery because it supported the idea of Denson, Bachman, and Zeller (1950) that uranium deposits could be derived from Tertiary volcanic ash beds. The Pumpkin Buttes find led to the discovery of even larger deposits in similar geologic settings across the state, particularly the Gas Hills, Crooks Gap, and Shirley Basin. Uranium occurs in trace amounts nearly everywhere on the planet, even in seawater, but only rarely is it concentrated into ore deposits. There are more than 200 different uranium-bearing minerals known and many other minerals that contain minor or trace amounts of uranium, such as zircon and feldspar. Uranium deposits can contain a number of different ore minerals such as uraninite, carnotite, tyuyamunite, coffinite, and several others although usually only a few dominate a given deposit. There are three main types of uranium ore deposits 1) conglomerate paleoplacer deposits, 2) unconformity deposits, and 3) sandstone-hosted deposits.
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