John & Lorraine Hill, Grand Junction, Colorado, Utah Uranium Oral History Project

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MR. AND MRS. JOHN HILL #1 after the depression, 1936. But prior to 1936 as a mining engineer, at which time they were developing the large molybdenum mine up at Climax. I left that position and went to work for the United States Vanadium Corporation with headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado, but the mining operations were at Rifle, Colorado and Uravan, Colorado. This was 1936. CE: About 10 years after Union Carbide bought the U.S.V. facilities at Rifle. JH: Well, my understanding is that U.S. V. bought the Rifle facilities or the Rifle mine about 1926. And the work at Uravan, the preliminary work on the evaluation of the vanadium deposits in that area was started about 1932, as I recall from conversations with Mr. Burwell, who was general manager at that time and is now deceased. Well, I worked at Uravan as a junior engineer and my work at that time was mapping the underground workings in that area that were purchased from or acquired from the Old Standard Chemical Company by the U.S. Vanadium Corporation, and those workings were rather extensive. Although we had many mine maps, the mine maps were not up-to-date and my job at that time was a mining engineer, a junior engineer. We mapped a lot of the old workings that contained large quantities of developed ore. 2