Marion F. Bolton Papers, 1950-1984

Marion Frederick Bolton was born June 21, 1917 in El Reno, Oklahoma. After high school, he enlisted in the U. S. Army in 1941 and served until honorary discharge in 1945. In 1942, he married Alma van Fleet in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Bolton trained as a mining engineer and in the early 1950s began working with Kerr McGee geologists to find uranium deposits in the American Southwest. Bolton was General Manager at Shiprock and oversaw the company's mining operations and land expansion in the area. Between 1952 and 1963 he was part of management at the Kerr McGee site in Cove, Arizona. In 1960 he became Vice President for the Kerr McGee uranium mill at Grants, New Mexico. In 1973 he was appointed Vice President of Safety and Environmental Services at Kerr McGee. In 1976 he was Vice President of the Kerr McGee Copper Project in Patagonia, Arizona. Bolton's involvement in the nuclear industry carried on within the family; he was the father-in-law of Gilbert Zigler, a nuclear engineer who was a first responder for containing the Three Mile Island incident. Bolton died in New Mexico in 2008.

Kerr McGee was an American energy company founded in 1929 by Robert S. Kerr. Geologist Dean A. McGee joined the company in 1946 and the company was renamed Kerr McGee. The company was a major player in post-war uranium production. In 1952, Kerr McGee Oil Industries purchased the mines of the Navajo Uranium Mining Company, and an ore station and uranium mill at Shiprock, New Mexico. The mines involved one of several deposits of uranium on Navajo land in Apache County, Arizona.

Despite the known health risks of exposure to uranium, Kerr McGee's operations in the area employed Navajo Nation residents as miners and mill operators. The radiation exposure and resulting illnesses were suffered by the workers over decades. Additionally, pollution from these mining operations decimated the surrounding land to such a critically severe extent that significant problems persist to the present day, and Navajo Nation members and miner families continue to experience long-term radiation exposure effects.  In 1979, the Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee began a series of lawsuits against Kerr McGee to seek compensation for the damages done to the community.  The U. S. Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in 1990, which was amended in July of 2000 and again in 2009.