Uranium mining in Colorado the Slick Rock, Gypsum Valley, Uravan, and Gateway mining districts. Uranium mining in southwest Colorado goes back to 1898, when a miner dug ten tons of yellow ore that tested high in uranium and vanadium out of a deposit at Roc Creek in Montrose County, Colorado, and shipped it to France, where M. M. C. Friedel and E. Cumenge identified the new mineral that they named carnotite. The mineral was mined for its vanadium, with uranium as a byproduct. Although radium had been discovered in 1898, it had been derived from pitchblende, and the radium content of carnotite was not
Uranium mining in Colorado oxide. The mine is owned by General Atomics subsidiary the Cotter Corporation, which estimates that there are an additional 16 million pounds (7300 metric tons) of uranium oxide resource remaining in the mine. The Copper King mine, in Larimer County about 25 miles northwest of Fort Collins and 5 miles northeast of Red Feather Lakes contained a skarn deposit that was worked unsuccessfully for zinc in 1920 and 1936. Prospectors found uranium at the abandoned mine in 1949, and it was worked for uranium from 1951 until 1953. The uranium occurs as pitchblende in a hydrothermal vein deposit in Precambrian