When Pratt Segmiller isn't running a filling station in Marysvale (pop. 600), Utah, he hunts rocks. One day, while prospecting around the sage and cedar-covered mountains northeast of Marysvale, he found some strange yellow-colored rocks strewn over a surface of about 60 acres. Segmiller thought they might be valuable, so he staked a claim and called the Vanadium Corp. of America. When it inspected the claim; it got pretty excited and leased the land from Segmiller. The yellow rocks were autunite, a uranium-bearing ore, and the strike looked like the most promising yet made in the U.S.
Not until after...