“The halt and the lame came by the hundreds Monday to the ranch of Jesse F. Reese to cover themselves at a cost of more than a dollar an hour, with dirt from a mildly radioactive dried-up stock pond,” reads an article from the Brownwood Bulletin in July 1956. This story is hard to believe, but Joshua Furry, Blanket area history expert, told me about the unlikely craze that exploded in both Comanche and Brown counties in the mid 1950s.
Yes, taking a bath in uranium rich dirt was a hot health trend, igniting the opening of quite a few of these “bathing” facilities along what they called the “Uranium Trail” in Comanche and Brown Counties. The idea of using radioactive water, mud or dirt for health purposes came out of Europe in the early 20th Century when experiments with radioactivity promised many different uses, before the hazards of working with such materials were widely understood.
“Reese, 52, a farmer, is making $200 or $300 a day from sick persons who hope to get some benefit out of the dust the Atomic Energy Commission won’t bother with. He lives 12 miles from Comanche at the end of a dusty mesquite-covered road called ‘Uranium Avenue’. The sign was put up, he said, by Mrs. Fred Hall, a neighbor, who got tired of visitors asking her where his farm is. Reese now has three buildings on his 260-acre place where persons with arthritis, rheumatism, spasmatic colon, headaches, sinus and cancer sit from morning until late at night.”
Reese’s uranium bathing facility was in Comanche County, near the town of Newburg. Brown County entrepreneurs were not, however, willing to be left in the dust. “The business of sitting in radioactive Brown County soil was formally launched at 2 p.m. Sunday in the “Uranium Sand Palace’ at May,” another notice tells us, this time from August 1955. “O. A. Burnett, who operates a general store at May, is the proprietor of the new establishment which is located in the May business district about a block from his store. It is on FM 589, a half block east of the Brownwood-Cisco highway.” Burnett was shipping in uranium rich dirt from farmer Ted Naron’s place, ten miles west of May. According to testing done on the soil, the uranium content of Burnett’s dirt was .021 to .039. ”We are giving our customers the choice of using either strength, or a mixture,” Burnett said
I’m not sure exactly how many bathing facilities existed along the Uranium Trail. They were popping up in the rich soil as an easy way to make good money like weeds in the early spring. Comanche County had at least 10, while Brown County landowners who had a bit of uranium found in their soil were racing to open their own facilities.
The planned opening for another Brown County facility was announced in the Bulletin in 1955, this one at Lake Brownwood. “Uranium dirt activities, which have attracted worldwide attention to Comanche County during recent weeks, will be given a workout in Brown County. Radioactive dust from Brown County land will be used in a new project that is scheduled to go into operation late this week about a mile and half southwest of the State Highway 279 bridge across the Jim Ned portion of Lake Brownwood,” we are informed by the Bulletin. “Travis White, who lives at the site of the project, and Vernon Pruett, who resides west of Brownwood, are partners in the new setup, which will probably go by the name of ‘White-Pruett Uranium Ranch’.” Travis said his new building, constructed for the bathing, would accommodate 50 uranium soakers at one time. He was careful to emphasize that his operation makes no health claims regarding the results of this activity.
The radioactive bath boom in this area seems to have been pretty short-lived. Despite the big plans, I found no references to these facilities after 1956. I don’t know how the industry met its demise, but suspect the Health Department may have taken a hand in the fallout. Interestingly, the practice still continues in some countries. There is a place called the Radon Palace in the Czech Republic where you can, if you want, dip your toes in radioactive springs and hope for a cure for what ails you. It is true that radioactive substances are actually used today to treat many types of cancer. Who knows? Maybe the Uranium Trail idea wasn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. The swift rise and fall of this industry is certainly a curious, even bizarre episode. How quickly a trend can come and go!
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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com. Comments regarding her columns can be emailed to [email protected].
