Anxious to prove their patriotism, rural Utahns embraced the uranium frenzy with trusting abandon, Ward believes. So did destitute Navajos. So did cash-poor ranchers and farmers elsewhere in the Four Corners area of neighboring Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

Government and mining company officials assured them there were no risks.

Dead and dying

Dale Maughan, the former principal of Monticello High School, rues the day he moved his family to southeastern Utah. "My son would still be alive today," he says, pointing the finger of blame unmistakably at the government.

Jon Alan Maughan died July 5,1966, of leukemia two months before his 17th birthday. The captain of his high school basketball team, Jon Alan used to swim with friends in the pond of water that collected at the uranium mill on the outskirts of this small town of less than a thousand people.

Within a radius of five or six blocks of the Maughan home, six other young people died of leukemia, the oldest a young mother in her 20s, the youngest a child of 4. Most were teenagers.

"I blame the government," Maughan said. "Their scientists knew the effects of radiation, and they knew the dangers. But they didn't say a word to anyone."

Rell Frederick, now 68, lost a lung to cancer working in the uranium mines in Marysvale in the 1950s. Most of his co-workers are dead from emphysema and various forms of cancer, mostly lung cancer.

After a long shift in the mines, some miners would playfully blow across a device that measured radiation. The Geiger Counter would jump to life.

In 1951 and 1952, safety officials measured the amount of radiation in one Marysvale mine at 6,000 "working levels" at a time when four was considered safe.

Frederick later joined the military where he was involved with nuclear testing and learned about the effects of radiation. Wiser and somewhat frightened, he returned to the Marysvale mines asking questions about safety measures.

"I was told it was radon gas, that it was different from nuclear fallout and there was no danger," he said. "I was a good ol' country boy and I believed them."

He still believed them even after U.S. Health Service officials came to the mine to test the miners. The miners were told they would be notified immediately if the tests showed anything was wrong. None of the miners ever got a call.

Frederick later went to work as a safety inspector for the U.S. government where he was trained in the dangers of radiation and how it affected the human body. "It was a completely different story than what I was told when I worked in the mines," he said.

Arden "Tommy" Higgins, 67, worked 12 years in the mines. He lost part of a lung to cancer and later an ear. He considers himself lucky.