Jeffrey City: Biggest Bust of Them All

The town's mill stood two miles northeast. Western Nuclear ran a uranium mill there from 1956 to 1981, at its peak processing 1,700 tons of ore a day, before it went on standby and closed five years later. Its sandy, radioactive tailings, which had contaminated the groundwater, were regraded and buried in an engineered disposal cell under rock. In 2023 Wyoming ended Western Nuclear's license, and the Department of Energy's Office of Legacy Management took the Split Rock site, at 5,431 acres its largest, into long-term care and monitoring.

What the plaque says

Jeffrey City: Biggest Bust of Them All Home on the range, a tiny community consisting of a post office, gas station, and a few souls, sat quiet and undisturbed along this lonesome stretch of highway until the 1950's. That all changed when the nation's uranium industry boomed after World War II. In the early 1950s, prospectors started combing Wyoming's hills for surefire riches. Then, in 1954 prospector Robert (Bob) Adams discovered uranium. He founded the Lost Creek Oil and Uranium Company, purchased property next to Home on the Range and built a company town, naming it Jeffrey City after Dr. C.W. Jeffrey of Rawlins, his biggest financial backer. Adams renamed his company Western Nuclear, Inc. and later sold to Phelps-Dodge, a mining conglomerate, during the industry's slowdown in the 1960s. With the next uranium boom in the 1970s, Phelps-Dodge added employees and built housing, streets, and parks; Jeffrey City bustled. In 1980, with nearby uranium mines in full swing, over 4,000 people called Jeffrey City home. The school had almost 600 students, and the area's uranium industry employed nearly 1,000 workers. The town's existence revolved around the uranium industry. Then came the bust in the early 1980s - and when uranium busted, Jeffrey City faded away. By 1982 only 1,000 people remained. The uranium market dipped lower and nearly everyone left town. Homes were wheeled away, and families left in droves. Today the population is less than 100, and Jeffrey City is quiet once again, though the vacant streets still whisper of the thousands who once lived and played here.

Where it stands

More markers nearby

• Ice Slough — 9.2 mi
• Split Rock — 12 mi
• The Sweetwater Valley — 19 mi
• The Oregon Trail — 19 mi