A tiny community called Home on the Range, consisting of a post office, gas station, and a few residents, remained quiet along this highway until the 1950s, when the nation’s uranium industry boomed after World War II. In the early 1950s, prospectors searched Wyoming’s hills for uranium, and in 1954 Robert (Bob) Adams discovered it, founded the Lost Creek Oil and Uranium Company, bought property next to Home on the Range, and built a company town named Jeffrey City after Dr. C.W. Jeffrey of Rawlins, his biggest financial backer. Adams later renamed his company Western Nuclear, Inc. and sold it to Phelps-Dodge during the industry slowdown of the 1960s. During the next uranium boom in the 1970s, Phelps-Dodge expanded the workforce and added housing, streets, and parks, and Jeffrey City thrived. In 1980 more than 4,000 people lived there, the school enrolled almost 600 students, and the area’s uranium industry employed nearly 1,000 workers. The town depended on uranium, and when the industry collapsed in the early 1980s, Jeffrey City declined rapidly. By 1982 only 1,000 people remained, the market fell further, most residents left, homes were moved away, and today fewer than 100 people live there as the town has become quiet again.