Oral History | Uranium Memories Project | Moab Museum
November 16, 2025 • 29:39
INTERVIEWER
Paul Hudson
INTERVIEWEE
Phil Hudson

A: Hi. My name is Paul Hudson. I’m here with my dad, Phil Hudson, it’s November 15, 2025. We’re doing this as part of the Moab Museum Uranium Memories Project. And my dad’s going to tell his story of their experience with the uranium boom and Moab back in 1953. So Dad, tell us your story.

Q: here were you born? Who were your parents? How did you get to Moab?

A: My parents was Tom and Opal Hudson. Daddy was a wildcatter, always in the oil business, working here and there, and experienced quite a bit of high up people who were in the oil business, like Phillips Petroleum and Marlin Oil Company and all that which was in western Osage County. So he was a busy man. He had a fire within him that he was always going and doing and looking for something else. So we were drug around behind him, living different places here in Oklahoma. Lived in Tulsa for a while. We lived in Skiatook, we lived in Bartlesville, all over the country, just following him from place to place. And we also went to Colorado when we was trying to get into a gold mine out there.

Michigan. Went to Michigan. He opened a new oil field up there. After drilling 19 dry holes, he never gave up. He knew there was oil there. And so after that, things went well, after we got the oil there.

Q: So when you were first in Durango, I saw a newspaper article said that was the first oil well drilled in La Plata County.

A: Yes, it was out there in a little town called Breen. We drilled a well out there, drug a rig all the way from Oklahoma out there. And my two oldest brothers, Don and John, which were twins, and had just got out of World War Two, veterans there, and they came and worked out there on that well and drilled that first
well in Colorado, in La Plata County. It’s still working. It’s still there. They’re still doing some drilling around there.

Q: So how did — so you guys ended up in Moab. So it’s 1953. How did you come about to getting to Moab?

A: I wish I knew

Q: You’re 15 years old.

A: Yeah, and we, my dad always had a lot of contacts all over the country, people he’d come up with, and people would come to the house. That Mr. [Emmett] Culligan, you know the Culligan man. He come to our house one time because he was trying to get water somewhere. Chase’s Potato Chip, which is no longer around, but there was a big Chase Potato Chip company back then. He knew Charlie Chase. He knew people from all over the country. And how he did that, I don’t know, because all I did was stayed home and obeyed my parents and went school.

Q: So you and your brothers. So the oldest was Don and John, the twins. Yes, then there was your brother, Jim. Your brother, Zach.

A: Yes.

Q: You had your — your sister Juanita, your sister Joanne. Yeah. Then Zach and you were the youngest.

A: I was the youngest. Yeah.

Q: So what? What’s one of the things that led you guys to Moab? Your brother John had an accident?

A: Yes, yes. My brother John was killed in the 10th of March, 1953 and that’s when they had already started about, talking about Utah, going to Utah, but we were finishing up a well just outside of Pawhuska here, and they had an accident. It took his life. So with that in mind, we was in a quandary, you know, what to do, but decided to go ahead and go to Moab and see what we could do. So we had purchased a truck and truck with a rig on the back of it, a drilling rig and a water truck so you could provide water for the drilling and so in the first of June 1953, my brother Zach and my dad and myself left Oklahoma City, where we had bought the rig, and drove to Moab. It was about a four day trip at about 45 miles an hour, and it was a long trip, but we made it, and when we got there, we were in nature’s wonderland. We never saw such things as what’s in Moab. Those people who have been there and have not been there before, it’s always just an amazing thing to do that. And so we got there, and we weren’t ready yet to start drilling on our claims, because we had to get them patented. So we did drilling for other people. And I remember one occasion we were drilling way up the river there, at the place that’s called Dewey Bridge, where the old bridge crossed — the bridge around there, across the Colorado River. So we went up to there to drill some wells. And that’s the first time we had ventured up the canyon of the Colorado River that ran through Moab. And we were just amazed to look at all the rocks, all the rocks above us, and they were caves, and they were this and that along the way, and beautiful scenery.

Q: You said that was a gravel road.

A: It was a gravel road then, and it was sort of still had the spring flooding a little bit along the river, which part of the river was running up on the road. But it wasn’t deep enough that we couldn’t go through it. So we went on through it to get through, to go up there, to drill the wells. It’s beautiful. And I was — I tried to write about some of these things a while back, and I was… This one memory stuck in my mind so well. That we rode up to DeweyBridge in the back of a pickup. So we really had a good view of everything. And if anybody could ever do that or get in a convertible, whether we have free vision to look all around, it’s worth the trip to do that. And it was wonderful. And so we just fell in love with the country, and we stopped there. The little spring is still there [referencing Matrimony Springs]. Just as you turn off the highway to go to Dewey Bridge, the little springs there, it’s still there. Water still running out. And the legend was, if you ever drink out of that water, you’d come back to Moab again. And I found that was true. I went back to Moab when I was in my 30s as the pastor [at the First Baptist Church] back there. So going back to Moab, and it’s still my favorite place to be, is in Moab. [It’s] a lot different now, a lot different than it ever was. Truth be told, probably couldn’t afford to live there right now. Things have gotten so high. But it’s still — the country’s still there, and the beauty is still there. They can’t spoil that.