When many of their neighbors and former neighbors in Antelope Valley were diagnosed with cancer during the last decade, including rare forms of the disease, John and Elizabeth Wear began wonder if there was something in the environment that might be causing the outbreak.

One woman developed a rare stomach cancer when she was 30 and today at age 43 has battled cancer twice. A 38-year-old neighbor died of a rare brain tumor in 2004. Another 40-year-old man was diagnosed with sarcoma, a soft-tissue cancer, that attacked the muscles of his face. He died in 2003.

On a recent drive through Antelope Valley, an area lush with alfalfa fields sliced into squares by gravel roads, John Wear pointed out farm houses he knew had been visited by cancer or diseases that suppress the immune system.

“The man that lived there had pancreatic cancer and the woman across the way had stomach cancer,” he said. “Daren Miller, who lived there, died of a rare brain cancer in 2004 and left a wife and four young daughters. The woman who lived there had a rare immune disease and she died in 2006.  The man who lived there also had stomach cancer.”

” There’s so many, and those are just the ones we know about.”

Melissa Bakker, 43, of Antelope Valley, who was diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer 13 years ago and has since been treated for lung cancer even though she never smoked, said she was aware of the abandoned pesticide dump but assumed it had been sealed off and properly closed. Her family moved to another property in Lander County, but still owns the plot in Antelope Valley which is farmed by a tenant family.