In this untold 1950s Americana rags-to-riches story, maverick Charlie Steen risks it all to search for the world's most valuable mineral and helps launch a mining boom bigger than the Gold Rush. Charlie was born in Texas in the 1930s.

His father had been a wildcatter who struck it rich once and lost his fortune. Charlie is educated in geology, and goes into the oil and gas business, discovering some of the world’s biggest gas fields in Peru.

Returning stateside, he marries a girl he met at school. Soon after, he is fired from Standard Oil when he refuses to file the necessary paperwork for land he claims cannot be surveyed for oil.

He is blacklisted in the industry and is unable to return to work as a petroleum engineer. He works a series of odd jobs, mostly carpentry, until he happens upon an article in the newspaper announcing uranium exploration.

As luck would have it, Uncle Sam is offering $31 a pound for uranium ore in the form of a yellow mineral known as carnotite—if you can find it. Packing up their belongings, Charlie and his young family move to the Colorado side of the Colorado Plateau in search of the elusive stuff—after all, uranium was known to be in the area since even before Madam Curie visited the area in the early 1900s.

Finding only a smattering of surface ore, Charlie heads to Moab with family in tow. While other prospectors are scouring the southern Utah landscape with Geiger counters, radiometric devices that measure radiation, Charlie is unable to afford one, and must find other ways to discover uranium.

He becomes the laughing stock, and is known as the Cisco Kid—for the poor town he lives in consisting of tar paper huts. With everything going against him—lack of money, no Geiger counter, even the U.

S. Geological Survey laughing at him, and years without success—does he find what he came looking for? Or, does somebody else beat him to it?Winner of multiple awards and placements in screenplay competitions, including Finalist - Sundance Institute/Alfred P.

Sloan Foundation Fellowship Competition with producer Barrie M. Osborne (THE LORD OF THE RINGS) attached.

Comps: OCTOBER SKY, THE RIGHT STUFF, TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM, STROKE OF GENIUS, THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN, A BEAUTIFUL MIND. .