Uranium was discovered in the Carrizo Mountains in 1918 by John Wade. He hired Navajos to mine this plot of land for radium ore. Although he shipped out thirty seven gunny sacks of ore, the market from vanadium wasn't what Wade had predicted and he stopped operations relatively soon after they began, leaving the area inactive until the 1940s.

In 1941, the Vanadium Corporation of America (VCA) began leasing land from the Navajo tribe for mining purposes. This ore was shipped to their processing mill in Monticello. To expedite the amount of vanadium, a byproduct of uranium mining, needed to supply the Manhattan Project, the federal government formed the Metal Reserves Company which lasted until 1944.

Between 1942-1945, about 21,300 tons of ore containing about 1.0 million pounds of vanadium pentoxide was shipped from the Carrizo Mountains. The vanadium ore also contained about 108,600 pounds of Triuranium octoxide (a compound of uranium). An estimated 76,000 pounds of uranium yellowcake was recovered from the Carrizo vanadium-uranium ores for the Manhattan Project during the years of 1943-1945.

In 1947 the Atomic Energy Commission was created and began a procurement program on the Colorado Plateau. The VCA resumed mining for uranium for the AEC in 1948. The ore that was mined was first shipped to Naturita, Colorado, and later to Durango, Colorado. Mining of the Carrizos increased in 1952 when the AEC opened a buying station in Shiprock, New Mexico. The years between 1955 and 1959 were the most productive time for the Carrizos. By 1966, mining stopped as all known ore bodies were depleted.

References

http://www.admmr.state.az.us/DigitalLibrary/AEC-DOE/GJBX143-81UraniumProductionArizonaPart3.pdf

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/umtra/shiprock_title1.html