ATOMIC ENERGY: Uranium Jackpot

New Mexico's Ambrosia Lake is a misnamed patch of sunbaked, bone-dry limestone where miners have long thought they smelled uranium. The Santa Fe Railway opened a small strip mine near by in 1950, and Anaconda Co. began to work the richest U.S. uranium mine 20 miles southeast of Ambrosia Lake. But no one struck it rich in Ambrosia Lake until 1955. Then a young (31) Texan named Louis B. Lothmann came in with a $10,000 grubstake, two years of college geology and a hunch on where to look. He teamed up with Septuagenarian...

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