We moved to Moab in 1955 chasing the uranium dream with a brand new 1955 Dodge Power Wagon pulling a 24′ Boles Aero travel trailer, and a 1951 Willys CJ3 with a little military jeep trailer. We initially prospected in the Circle Cliffs area where my Mother discovered a small deposit of carnotite. She was using a Geiger Counter or scintillator and watched the needle practically bend in two when it pegged out!
We moved in off the desert in the fall of 1955 when my brother Jeff and I were forced to begin school. We initially lived in the old P&W trailer park adjacent to the Apache Motel. My father Bradley also worked as a real estate broker in town and owned the old one horse Maverik gas station. As I recall he later sold it to Karl and Patsy Tangren.
My brother was working at Arches National Monument, for Bates Wilson, and was dating his daughter Cindy. As I grew up I worked at many of the surrounding ranches in Castle Valley (for the McCormicks and Shumways), Fisher Valley (D.L. Taylor had just gotten out of the Army) and lastly on the Dugout Ranch for the Redds until such a time I began to realize that the rear-end of a shapely young girl was enormously more attractive than the same afore mentioned part of a cow.
