Yellowcake Towns: Uranium Mining Communities in the American West

Michael Amundson presents a detailed analysis of the four mining communities at the hub of the twentieth-century uranium booms: Moab, Utah; Grants, New Mexico; Uravan, Colorado; and Jeffrey City, Wyoming. He follows the ups and downs of these "Yellowcake Towns" from uranium's origins as the crucial element in atomic bombs and the 1950s boom to its use in nuclear power plants, the Three Mile Island accident, and the 1980s bust. Yellowcake Towns provides a look at the supply side of the Atomic Age and serves as an important contribution to the growing bibliography of atomic history.