Worries about the Colorado's radioactive history mount as fires burn on the Western Slope 

Six weeks into the Turner Gulch fire’s run on the Uncompahgre National Forest, fire crews have corralled the nearly 32,000-acre fire into 79% containment, bulldozing fuel breaks and dropping buckets of water and setting small, controlled fires to hold their lines.

While the crews’ main focus is the future movement of flames, some individuals are concerned about the region’s radioactive past.

Along the fire’s western edge is Niche Road — also known as 6 3/10 Road — a historic corridor between hundreds of uranium mines in the Uravan Mineral Belt, the 1,500-square-mile uranium-rich chunk of Colorado and Utah, and the Climax Mill in Grand Junction.

South and west of the road is Calamity Camp , a mining camp founded in the early 1900s that the Bureau of Land Management says contains “resid