San Juan County, Utah: People, Resources, and History edited by Allan Kent Powell

San Juan County most of the areas that were considered favorable for the discovery of uranium were claimed.

Few of the miners who formed companies in late 1953 and early 1954 expected a rush to their doors for their stock.

If they could just raise operating capital, they would feel repaid for their efforts. However, in their simple aspirations, they failed to consider the extent of speculative fever and the ability of certain promoters to stampede investors their way.

A promoter named Jay Walters moved to Salt Lake City shortly after the news of Steen's strike broke in 1953. Sensing the possibility of interesting the public in uranium stocks, he bought a few claims and early in 1954 formed the Uranium Oil and Trading Company, capitalized at 3,000,000 one-cent shares. Finding the established brokerage firms reluctant to handle his stock, Walters enlisted the aid of a young agent named Jack Coombs. Coombs received permission from a friend, Frank Whitney, to peddle stock in the latter's coffee shop and the first week sold $10,000 worth of stock. With this promising beginning, Walters formed another company, Alladin Uranium, and promptly sold $43,000 worth of stock.

Even more encouraging, within a few weeks after opening, both stock issues had closed and the market price of each had gone up at least 500 percent. Coombs and Whitney both left their post in the coffee shop, established their own investment firms, and prepared for the stock boom Walters anticipated. 28 The rush was not long coming. By May the demand for uranium issues far outstripped the capacity of brokers to service the requests of customers. Daily sales soared from a manageable 200,000 shares in March to 7,000,000 shares in May. Between February and June 1954 speculative interest in the penny stock market was fanned to white-hot intensity by the continued announcements of bonanza uranium discoveries, the well-publicized success of some of the first companies who had offered stock, and the almost universal success of uranium stock offerings. Some of the hysteria subsided early in June, but uranium stocks continued to move very 290