Cord Rolls Again

Of all the golden boys in the Golden Twenties, none glittered brighter than a fast-talking, fast-thinking young empire builder named Errett Lobban Cord. At one time or another, Cord had control of New York Shipbuilding, Stinson Aircraft, American Airways, and Auburn Automobile Co., which built the Cord car, now a highly prized collector's item among classic-car buffs. In the great Depression, Automan Cord's empire dissolved. Since then, he has been living quietly in Nevada, making money in real estate and serving as a state senator. Last week Automan Cord was back making the kind of glamorous news he loves, this time in uranium.

From a mining syndicate headed by Baltimore's C. E. Tuttle and onetime General Services Administrator Jess Larson, Cord and associates collected $17 million for their uranium claims near Charley Steen's famed Mi Vida mine (TIME, June 27, 1955) in Utah's Big Indian district, the biggest price ever paid in the U.S. for uranium holdings.

Cord was not the only one to make a killing on the deal. The claims had been discovered in 1953 by a La Sal, Utah ranch foreman named Zeke Johnson, whose son Jimmy was one of Steen's first miners. Steen, short of cash, had asked Jimmy Johnson to find a camp cook, and Jimmy talked his mother into taking on the job. In return, Steen gratefully told the Johnsons to look over some promising rock formations ten miles north of Mi Vida. Zeke Johnson did, and staked out his claims. They were so promising that Cord and his friends paid Johnson $80,000 in cash and royalties that would guarantee him up to $500,000 if the mine paid off. It did, after Cord put $1,750,000 into exploration and drilling.

Last week, with production up to 150 tons of ore daily, the mine's new owners were looking for a processing mill to handle their rich lode. One possibility was that they would buy the AEC's only remaining reduction mill at Monticello, Utah, use it to mill their own ore.

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