Oral History | Uranium Memories Project | Moab Museum
October 30, 2025 • 16:57
INTERVIEWER
Megan Vickery

INTERVIEWEE
Shannon Culwell, RN

Megan Vickery 00:01
All right. My name is Megan Vickery. It is October 30, 2025. We’re at Main Street Bagels in Grand Junction, recording this interview for the Moab Museum’s Uranium Memories Project. I’m here with Shannon. Do you want to introduce yourself?

Shannon Culwell 00:16
Hi, I’m Shannon Calwell. I’m a nurse.

Megan Vickery 00:20
Wonderful, awesome, Shannon, let’s just start with when and where you were born? Where you’re from?

Shannon Culwell 00:28
I am from a little small town in California, and that’s where I was born and raised. And then I came to Grand Junction in 2003, is when I came as a traveling nurse here to town and actually moved officially to Grand Junction in 2005.

Megan Vickery 00:50
Great. And so you’ve been in Grand Junction since then?

Shannon Culwell 00:54
Yeah.

Megan Vickery 00:54
And you recently got involved with nuclear care. Can you tell me about that?

Shannon Culwell 00:59
Yeah, it’s been very eye opening, I’ll say. I’ve only been in this kind of work for a year now. It’s repetitious and monotonous at times, but very purposeful at times too. It’s been, yeah, it’s been right what I need.

Megan Vickery 01:27
And so living in Grand Junction for 20 years prior to that, what did you know about uranium and mining and that history?

Shannon Culwell 01:35
Not a thing. Not a thing. I mean, I’ve been up to the ghost towns, I guess I would say, they’re ghost towns. And you always saw mines, closed mines and everything, but, you know, you just see them, and you didn’t ever think of what it actually was.

Megan Vickery 01:53
And so how did you learn about where you now work?

Shannon Culwell 01:57
Um, I started, because I worked for the company, and then I have four different patients that I take care of, and then listening to their stories. And so I’m like, Oh, I actually want to hear about this stuff. And so I started reading and looking. And I love sight seeing, so I actually drove down to Moab and the other sites and everything, and Gateway and Uravan, actually, and checked all that out, and I always like to know that that stuff existed. It’s pretty, pretty cool.

Megan Vickery 02:38
Yeah. So what kinds of patients do you work with miners or mill workers or..?

Shannon Culwell 02:45
Or I actually work with one miner. I work with miners. I work with truck drivers who hauled the uranium out. And I actually work with people who took care of the diesels that did the hauling. So, around about several.

Megan Vickery 03:08
The whole range.

Shannon Culwell 03:08
Yeah. Whole range of them, yeah, yeah.

Megan Vickery 03:10
And what is that, I guess, what does this program look like? What does this work look like? How do they get connected with you?

Shannon Culwell 03:21
I’m not — well, I work for a company, and the company that I work for specifically only takes care of atomic workers. I didn’t even know what that word even meant before a year ago. Atomic workers, what the heck is that? And it’s just realizing all that there is out there. I had no idea. No idea.

Megan Vickery 03:48
Yeah. So can you tell me some stories or things that you’ve learned from your patients?

Shannon Culwell 03:59
Well, the miner doesn’t like the fact that the other people get the compensation and everything, and he’s pretty particular about that. One of the — another one of the workers shows me all the things that are here in town that I had no idea that existed. It’s, I mean, it’s probably public knowledge, if you know what you’re looking for. But the mill and the mill tailings and everything here in town, I didn’t know that existed, and people are working around that now, like, what is that? So other stories, let’s see, what else could I say? That’s it.

Megan Vickery 04:56
How do they talk about their time in the industry?

Shannon Culwell 05:02
Like it was no big deal. Like, honest, no big deal. Like they swam in the water. I mean, there was uranium puddles and ponds and, like, one of my patients, he worked down in Uravan, lived in Uravana and everything and his whole family, that was their property and everything, and for them to move out and like, they have pictures of everything back then. And so I saw the pictures, and then I drove down to Uravan, and it doesn’t even exist. And I’m like, there’s no way. And so like, if you Google, “take me to Uravan, Colorado,” it doesn’t exist. And it’s like, how can it be wiped out? I mean, our whole history of these people have been wiped off the map, and it’s just like, wow. It’s pretty eye opening. Sad. Let’s see what else. Yeah, it pretty sad.

Megan Vickery 06:27
Their medical situation hasn’t tainted their memory of the industry at all?

Shannon Culwell 06:34
No.

Megan Vickery 06:35
Interesting

Shannon Culwell 06:36
Yeah, because I even, like as a medical professional, like I even said, like, they [the uranium industry] know, they knew what they were doing. And but one guy even said, “Well, what else were we gonna do?” And I’m like, “Well…” And he said, “Well, everybody was doing it.” Well, not everyone. I mean, you could have moved. I mean, I don’t know. But they, you know, they were just part of, I want to say, the sheep. That everybody just followed what they were supposed to do. Because I even asked, like some of them, “Well, how did you get involved with it?” “Well, my dad did it.” “Oh, well, he didn’t direct you out to something different?” “No.” I mean, there’s a good — you got paid good. It was consistent money. So yeah. And everybody down in Uravan, everybody lived together, everybody did the same thing. That whole town existed just for the mining. But why wipe it off the map? Like, and then, like, they took those houses. I don’t know [what] they did with those houses. I mean, I’m sure —