The Civilian Conservation Corps was the product of Franklin Roosevelt's genius and vision. In the 1930s, with millions of young men homeless and out of work, Roosevelt was determined to restore faith in the country and in its government--the CCC put these boys to work on conservation projects from Maine to California. In Moab, Utah, CCC camps had become a familiar sight since the mid-1930s. The first camp, at Dalton Wells, was opened in 1935 and its young workers devoted their days to rangeland improvement projects.
But in May 1940, a new CCC endeavor, called NP-7, was established near the residence quarters at Arches National Monument. Primary on their list of chores was the construction of a new entrance road that would begin at the base of The Penguins formation above the park "custodian's" rock home and wind its way over the rim and down into the Courthouse Towers. It would cross Courthouse Wash, and then climb along the base of The Great Wall to Balanced Rock. Enthusiasm for the newly expanded national monument ran high among tourism promoters, with dreams of a lucrative tourist economy in everyone's head. Grand County was, after all, a growing community with a 1940 official population of 2,063 residents. The Lion's Club, led by the venerable Doc Williams, was a particularly avid booster.
The CCC boys attacked the job with a vengeance and local optimists were convinced it could be finished in a few years, barring the unexpected.
The unexpected was just 18 months away, however, and the completion of the new entrance road would have to wait another 18 years.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval facility at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands, destroying much of the American fleet. The nation was stunned by the sudden attack and the following day, Moabites gathered around their radios to hear President Roosevelt ask for a declaration of war from the Congress: "No matter how long it might take us to stop this premeditated invasion, the American People in their righteous might, will see through to absolute victory!"
A year earlier, the American voters had returned FDR to the White House for an unprecedented third term. His opponent in that election, Republican Wendell Willkie, was a fair and decent man, who later won the respect and admiration of his Democratic rival. In Utah, sculptor Albert Christensen set out to build a memorial to both candidates. Near his home at Hole "n" the Rock, Albert started work on the model of his Unity Monument, a proposed bas relief carving to Roosevelt and Willkie. The project drew rave reviews from the Times-Independent and Moab residents made the dusty trip south to check on his progress.
But on August 28, 1941, the story ended abruptly when word came that Christensen's model had been "obliterated" by employees of the Department of the Interior. Special Agent N.F Waddell reported that the carving was illegal and on public land. According to the T-I report, Waddell explained that the department "has certain rules...we don't give out much information." Locals have been fighting the federal government ever since.
While the prospects of war had seemed inescapable in the months preceding Pearl Harbor, life in Moab maintained a certain familiarity that would sound similar even today. The Moab Times-Independent reported one possible "Glory Hole" after another, always hopeful that unbridled prosperity for Grand County lay just beyond the next turned shovel of dirt. In May 1941, the T-I announced that a new road (Later the infamous "Book Cliffs Highway" of the 1990s) would be built over the Book Cliffs from Grand County to Vernal. And in September 1941, publisher Bish Taylor proclaimed that a magnesium processing plant, to be built near Crescent Junction, would provide the world's magnesium needs "for 3000 years."
But in other ways, the approach of the war did stimulate the mining industry in Grand County. Verona Stocks remembered those times in her wonderful memoirs (published in The Zephyr in the early 1990s):
"When Germany began attacking the small countries in 1939, Pete (Stocks) thought that Hitler was going for all of Europe. He began worrying what the U.S. was going to do. Several miners from Moab were selling their ore to a (Japanese buyer). When a friend of Pete's brought him to our place, he saw 300 sacks of high grade ore. The man said, 'This will fill my order and I will give you a fair price.' Pete said to get that man off his place, because as soon as the Japanese ship gets out away from U.S. waters, Japan will attack the United States somewhere...Sure enough, on December 7, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor."
The United States needed vanadium, a vital element used in the hardening of steel and Grand County was known to have plenty of it. Verona's husband, Pete Stocks, and other miners continued to work dawn to dusk to provide vanadium for the war effort.
"Pete worked in several different mines...and was still mining the old fashioned way, with a double jack and hand steel. Most miners were buying compressors and jack hammers.
"This country needed vanadium. It was used in iron. Pete bought a big cabover Ford truck to haul his ore to the Uravan mill in Colorado. Then he bought the Yellow Cat mine from Tom Kelly, paying $1000 down. His brother Dick had a compressor and wanted to work with Pete. They had a working agreement, each taking 50% of the net earnings until Dick went into the Army; then Pete would take care of their parents."
At the end of 1942, the war came home to Moab in a way its citizens had not expected. In the weeks after Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiments on the west coast of the United States reached levels approaching hysteria, and the federal government ordered American citizens of Japanese descent to be interned at "relocation camps" throughout the desert southwest. It was one of the blackest events in the history of the United States in the 20th century. On December 31, Moabites learned that the Dalton Wells CCC camp would be converted to a facility for "troublesome" Japanese-Americans, who had been disruptive at other camps. (For a complete story of this awful tale, see "Moab's Concentration Camp" by Lloyd Pierson on page 20 of this issue).
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to Allied forces after six years of war and the death of tens of millions of soldiers and non-combatants. Meanwhile America tried to adjust to its new president, Harry Truman, after the death of Franklin Roosevelt on April 12, 1945.
In Moab, citizens were already looking to the post-war future. On May 3, the Bureau of Reclamation announced plans to build a dam on the Colorado River, just upstream from Moab. Impounded waters from this dam would back almost all the way to yet another proposed dam near Dewey Bridge. The cost of both dams was expected to exceed $35,000,000.
In fact, the Bureau of Reclamation's dam-building proposals on the Colorado River were staggering, and called for the construction of massive dams that, if completed, would stop the free-flow of almost every mile of the Colorado, from its headwaters, all the way to the Gulf of California.
But post-war plans to tame the river took a back seat to the war. A short notice in the Times-Independent announced that "the first ore to be consigned to the new Moab vanadium stock pile...reached Moab on Tuesday, when Ray Bennett delivered two large truckloads." The story meant very little to most Moabites, because none of them knew just how the government really intended to use it.
But on August 6, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress under the command of Colonel Paul Tibbetts, Jr. winged its way from the island of Tinian toward Japan. At 9:15 AM, bombardier Tom Ferebee released the world's first atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Within moments of detonation, 60,175 of its population of 344,000 were killed. Four square miles of the city were vaporized.
Almost ten thousand miles away, Moabites were stunned to discover its lethal connection to that distant Japanese city. The T-I reported, "As the news of the atomic bomb, which startled the world last week and hastened the surrender of Japan becomes more clarified, it is admitted by scientists that one of the basic elements, uranium, comes from southeastern Utah and Western Colorado.
"Carnotite has long been shipped from Grand and San Juan Counties in Utah. From the stories of the power of the atomic bomb and the new discovery of breaking down uranium with its vast potentialities for peacetime industry, mining of carnotite ores will doubtless be very active in southeastern Utah in the years to come."
And the citizens of Moab looked ahead to a very fanciful post-war world. In the summer of 1945, the T-I reported, "Mr. and Mrs. Average American of the post-war years will find themselves living in a world full of comforts, conveniences and gadgets that, at present day view, have a decidedly Jules Verne flavor...They may own a home that was erected from the ground up in eight hours and is just as stable as one which before the war required six months to build. When vacation time rolls around they may fly to Cairo or down to Buenos Aires for the week-end. Or they may even make an around the world trip during the head-of-the-family's traditional two week vacation."
Moab residents knew the road to wealth and two week world tours lay in the exploration and development of uranium, but hopes were quickly, if only briefly, dashed by the federal government's ban on the sale of any uranium-producing public lands. The action by President Truman was viewed by rural Utahns with the same hostility that most federal land management policies inspire today.
But with the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946, uranium and the crazed search for it was seldom out of the news. The AEC attempted to set a low price for the ore and independent miners complained bitterly of government intrusion and the instability of the market.
In Moab, the Chamber of Commerce continued to push for the construction of a new entrance road into Arches National Monument, a new bridge was constructed over the Colorado River and, in 1949, Hollywood director John Ford discovered the natural beauty of the Moab area when he brought his production company to town to film Wagonmaster. That same year the Moab Film Commission was established.
In the coming decade, movies and tourism would play a larger but still minor role in the life and times of Moab, Utah. Something else lurked just beyond the shadows in those last days of 1949 that would transform Moab forever. The Cold War and the American Dream were about to collide with each other in this sleepy little orchard town. In five years we would be called "The Uranium Capital of the World," and Charlie Steen would become its king.
