ABOVE: Richard Gordon Babbel, as he appeared in 1954. This photo montage, showing him with one of the Babbel Counters and a metal probe that could be attached to read radiation in drill holes, appeared on the cover of the first edition of Uranium Information Digest in September 1954. The magazine was produced by the Uranium Ore Producers Association and was printed in Grand Junction by The Daily Sentinel.
The uranium boom on the Colorado Plateau began in earnest in April 1948 when the Atomic Energy Commission announced a domestic procurement program designed to encourage uranium prospecting and build a domestic uranium industry.
In less than six months, a high-school-dropout from Moab, Utah, named Richard Gordon Babbel had developed a new device that would revolutionize how prospectors searched for uranium. Within a few years, Babbel moved to Grand Junction to manufacture his Babbel Geiger Counters.
After the AEC announcement in 1948, with uranium ore selling for approximately 45 times as much as gold-bearing ore, thousands of prospectors began furiously searching for uranium everywhere from Texas to Alaska. But Western Colorado and Eastern Utah were ground zero for the boom.
However, finding uranium ore and determining its radiation content were difficult in the earliest days of the boom. Traditional Geiger Counters weighed 30 pounds or more, and were not very accurate for field testing.
In addition to a Geiger Counter, prospectors lugged around chemical test kits to measure the uranium content of the ore they discovered. And when they took their ore to a processing site, samples had to be tested with chemicals to determine the percentage of uranium in the ore.
Babbel, who was born in Salt Lake City in 1915, but moved to southeastern Utah with his family when he was young, left high school at the age of 15 to help with the family homestead near Monticello. By 1948, he was living in Moab and had joined with partners to locate a uranium/vanadium mine claim called the Seven Mile Claim.
He and his partners used traditional Geiger Counters, but Babbel didn’t like to carry so much weight around, and he was dissatisfied with the vague results Geiger Counters produced, he told The Daily Sentinel in 1951.
Working with Orb Wiggle, the owner of a radio shop in Moab, and reading extensively on his own, Babbel learned about electronics. Then he and Wiggle developed a new mechanism called the Babbel-Wiggle Counter, which weighed three pounds and was more accurate than the big Geiger Counters.
After Life Magazine published an article in November 1948 called “The Uranium Rush,” which mentioned the new portable counter, Babbel said he “had to hire a girl full time just to address my mail.” And he transitioned from prospector and miner to equipment manufacturer.
An advertisement for Gordon Babbel’s Uranium Engineering Company, which appeared in The Daily Sentinel in 1954, shortly before Babbel sold the company.
By 1950, he had developed a new version of the Babbel Counter, the 600 A, then later the Model 610. In 1951 he was manufacturing the devices in Grand Junction as an employee of Minerals Engineering Co.
The Babbel Counter included a metal probe that could be inserted in a drill hole on a wire and measure radioactivity hundreds of feet below the surface.
It was 98 percent accurate and it eliminated the need for chemical assays in field work. In fact, it was so accurate that Minerals Engineering began using it to double check the chemical assays of ore delivered to the company’s uranium mill at Monticello.
“The Babbel Counter became a very valuable tool at uranium mills in Monticello, Moab and Grand Junction to evaluate the loads of ore being brought in to sell,” said Gordon’s son, William Babbel, who lives in Montrose. “Before the Babbel Counter, ore loads had to be randomly sampled and chemically assayed to estimate the uranium value of the load. This took a lot of time and was not very accurate.”
In 1952, Babbel left Minerals Engineering and started his own company to manufacture the Babbel Counters and other devices in Grand Junction. It was called Uranium Engineering Co. and it was located at 205 Colorado Ave.
Soon, Babbel had hired his brother, Ted, as a machinist, and several other people to work in the shop. They turned out on average, one new Babbel Counter a week, and they were in great demand.
A wooden carrying case for the Babbel Counter, along with an operational handbook for the device, and a hand-drawn schematic.
One thing Babbel didn’t do, however, was patent his invention, said William Babbel. “He was told by a lawyer in Moab that he couldn’t patent it, so he never did.”
Not surprisingly, other people rushed in with copycat machines to fill the demand by prospectors. But, William said, they were never able to reach the same level of accuracy as the Babbel Counter, so he always had plenty of people wanting to purchase his devices.
Sometime in the early 1950s, Babbel also joined the board of directors of the Uranium Ore Producers Association. When that organization produced a magazine beginning in 1954, Babbel appeared on the first cover.
In late 1954, Babbel sold his business to three of his associates, and he founded the nonprofit Babbel Research Foundation to conduct research into radiation detecting devices for both mining and civilian applications, and to explore ways to improve mining equipment in general.
About that time, Babbel and his Moab partners sold their interest in the Seven Mile Claim, which had yet to produce substantial amounts of uranium. It would eventually produce nearly 15,000 tons for the new owners.
Babbel also was a pilot with his own airplane, and son William recalled flying with him to Los Alamos, New Mexico, on several occasions. Additionally, Gordon Babbel was frequently consulted by the Atomic Energy Commission on issues related to radiation detection, William Babbel said.
Not long after he created the Babbel Research Foundation, Babbel and other uranium experts from the United States traveled the globe on what was called the Uranium World Tour to see how uranium was found and processed in Australia, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
In the late 1950s, Babbel’s life took a new direction. He move to Phoenix, Arizona, where he opened a retail store and became involved in copper mining activities.
A few years later, he returned to Grand Junction, where he was semi-retired. He died here in June 1977.
It’s not clear when Babbel’s former company, Uranium Engineering Co., halted production of the Babbel Geiger Counter, but you can still find them for sale on eBay and other online sites.
The Model 610 version of the Babbel Counter, which was manufactured in Grand Junction.
These days, one can also buy a hand-held Geiger Counter no larger than a smartphone online for around $50.
Meanwhile, owners of small mining claims in Colorado and Utah continue to probe their lands for high concentrations of uranium, using various styles of Geiger Counters and other newer technologies, according to multiple online sources.
Additionally, on March 31, House Bill 25-1040 was signed into law in Colorado, adding nuclear energy to the official list of clean energy sources in the state. That will likely guarantee that the search for uranium in the West won’t be abandoned any time soon.
Even so, no one expects uranium prospecting to once more become as frenzied an activity as it was 77 years ago, when Gordon Babbel realized that prospectors needed a better radiation detector.
Sources: Historic newspaper articles from www.newspapers.com and Utah Digital Newspapers; information at the Department of Energy, Office of Legacy Management’s Atomic Legacy Cabin, Grand Junction; Life Magazine, November, 1948; author interview with William Babbel and other information provided by Mr. Babbel.
Bob Silbernagel’s email is bobsilbernagel@gmail.com.
