Fry Canyon, Utah

Ghost town in Utah, United States

37°38′06″N 110°09′24″W / 37.63500°N 110.15667°W / 37.63500; -110.15667CountryUnited StatesStateUtahCounty San JuanFounded1950sAbandonedLate 1950sNamed forThe canyon of the same nameElevation

^[1]

5,374 ft (1,638 m)GNIS feature ID1435562^[1]

Fry Canyon was a small community in San Juan County, Utah, United States, located in Fry Canyon, just south of White Canyon, 50 miles (80 km) west on State Route 95 from its junction with U.S. Route 191 at Blanding.

Description

Fry Canyon was a uranium boom town during the 1950s, and the Fry Canyon Lodge opened in 1955, but it has since closed in 2007. The tiny hamlet, now a ghost town, is 19 miles (31 km) west-southwest of Woodenshoe Butte, and 8 miles (13 km) west-northwest of Natural Bridges National Monument.

The activities of a uranium ore upgrader mill (1957-1960) and a subsequent copper heap leach operation (1963-1968) at Fry Spring, two miles southeast of Fry Canyon, caused uranium, copper and radium contamination of groundwater in colluvial channel deposits within Fry Creek.^[2] The U.S. Geological Survey (with funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other agencies) installed three permeable reactive barriers, containing three different reactive materials (foamed zero-valent iron (ZVI) pellets, bone charcoal pellets, amorphous ferric oxyhydroxide (AFO) slurry mixed with pea gravel), at the site, which is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.^[3]

References

^ ^a ^b U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Fry Canyon
^ "Fry Canyon Mine Site Reclamation". Bureau of Land Management. Archived from the original on August 16, 2013. Retrieved March 28, 2012.
^ "Fry Canyon Reactive Barrier Installation". USGS Utah Water Science Center. Retrieved March 28, 2012.