Fry Canyon, Utah

Fry Canyon
Ghost town
Fry Canyon Lodge, one of the few structures in the area
Fry Canyon Fry Canyon Location of Fry Canyon in Utah
Coordinates: 37°38′06″N 110°09′24″W / 37.63500°N 110.15667°WCoordinates: 37°38′06″N 110°09′24″W / 37.63500°N 110.15667°W
Country	United States
State	Utah
County	San Juan
Founded	1950s
Abandoned	Late 1950s
Named for	The canyon of the same name
Elevation[1]	5,374 ft (1,638 m)
GNIS feature ID	1435562[1]

Fry Canyon was a small community in San Juan County, Utah, USA, located in Fry Canyon, just south of White Canyon, 50 miles west on State Route 95 from its junction with U.S. Route 191 at Blanding. Fry Canyon was a uranium boom town during the 1950s. The tiny hamlet, now a ghost town, is 19 miles west-southwest of Woodenshoe Butte, and 8 miles 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

1. U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Fry Canyon
2. "Fry Canyon Mine Site Reclamation". Bureau of Land Management. Retrieved 2012-03-28.
3. "Fry Canyon Reactive Barrier Installation". USGS Utah Water Science Center. Retrieved 2012-03-28.