S03 E14 If It Feels Good

In my family, there is a story told about my great grandfather Jens Christian Jensen. A very unique and ingenious man for his time.

Great Grandpa was a jack of all trades, raising a family on the alkali and prickly pear cactus flatlands of Emery County, Utah in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

These were an industrious lot who found ways to irrigate arid lands scrape out a living in a place most folks would happily walk away from. But, Mormons, Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were pretty unpopular at the time. Just a few decades before they had been forcibly driven out of Towns they had built like Kirtland Ohio and Nauvoo Illinois to name a few, and they were happy to be in a place where there was no one trying to kill them and take their lands – probably because no one wanted the remote, arid, and barren place they choose to settle in.

For Grandpa Chris there was another way - other than farming – along with a few others he was a prospector who found a very pure vein of uranium near Temple Mountain.

The uranium helped provide a good living for the family but was quite likely the thing that ultimately took his life.