The Mills of Silver Reef
The mills were the beating heart of Silver Reef’s mining boom — the places where raw sandstone ore was crushed, washed, and refined into valuable silver. While the mines pulled the ore from the ground, the mills turned it into profit, and their constant noise and activity defined daily life in the town.
About Mills & Milling
Before explaining details about the different mills that were built around Silver Reef, it’s important to know a little about what a mill is and the various milling processes.
What is a Mill?
In most cases, a mill is a building and functions like a factory. Silver‑bearing rock (ore) from the mines were hauled in by wagon and fed into the mill for processing. Ore entered on one side of the mill, and both pure silver and waste rock would come out on the other side. The waste rock was dumped into what are called tailings – the distinctive mounds of finely ground rock often seen around historic mills and mining sites.
In the 1870s and 80s, the efficiency of the mills was not as great and some of the silver was dumped into the tailings. Later, after the 1920s, extraction methods became more efficient, making it profitable for companies to “rework the tailings” (re-milling), as it was called, to extract the previously discarded silver. This practice continued on and off in Silver Reef until the uranium mining years of the 1950s.
Mills were usually built on downward sloping hills. A good example is the 1950s-era uranium mine that can still be viewed next to the Barbee & Walker Mine overlook to the west of the museum. Below are examples of mills, such as the former uranium mill and a gold mill in Bodie, California.
Why Mills Were Needed
The ore of the Harrisburg Mining District was unusual — silver locked inside sandstone. As a result, the mills had to use specialized crushing and washing techniques to free the metal. The mills were among the most advanced in the region at the time.
Silver Reef had several mills starting in 1876, with the last one stamping ore about 1916, not to mention a uranium mill that operated during the 1950s. Of those mills and during the silver-boom years, the two most important mills were the Barbee & Walker and the Stormont.
Processing the ore at or near Silver Reef was necessary to avoid shipping costs of hauling the ore a long distance, such as to Pioche, Nevada, or near Salt Lake City, where existing mills were located. Businessmen developing mines in the district knew they needed a nearby mill to process the ore in order to be profitable. Recovering pure silver from mines around the district averaged 20-50 troy ounces of silver to one ton of ore.
During the boom years, seven mills were constructed In the district to mill ore from area mines. Six of them utilized a “stamp mill” and one used an “arrastra”. Both types of mills are explained under Milling Methods below. Four of the seven mills processed most of the ore. The seven mills were built in the following chronological order.
- Steele Mill – arrastra milling method – location Toquerville
- Duplaix and Spicer Mill – 8 stamp mill – location Toquerville
- Leeds Mill – 10 stamp mill – location Leeds
- Buckeye (Pioneer) Mill – 3 stamp mill – location Silver Reef
- Stormont Mill – 10 stamp mill – location Babylon
- Christy Mill – 5 stamp mill – location Silver Reef
- Barbee-Walker Mine & Mill – 5 stamp mill – location Silver Reef
Milling Methods
Of the seven mills in the district, only the Steele Mill used an arrastra, an early grinding device powered by animals or water. All the others relied on stamp mills, which used heavy iron stamps to crush ore into a fine powder, much like using a hammer to smash rocks. Both machines served the same purpose: reducing rock to a workable consistency so the valuable minerals could be separated. Modern milling methods, however, are far more advanced. Today’s large‑scale operations use high‑efficiency ball mills and sophisticated leaching processes to extract metals from ore – techniques that far surpass the technology available in the boom years of Silver Reef.
Arrastras
Arrastras were ancient ore‑crushing apparatuses that had been used in Europe for centuries before it reached the Americas. Spanish settlers introduced the technology to Mexico, where it became a common milling method. From there, Mexican miners carried the practice north into what is now the United States. As a result, arrastras became widespread across the mining regions of Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah.
The mechanism of an arrastra is quite simple. Ore was placed into a circular pit or basin – usually constructed from hard stone such as granite. Inside the basin, several large, rounded granite stones were dragged over the ore to crush it into smaller fragments. A mule or other livestock typically provided the power by walking in a circle to turn a central post that pulled the heavy stones across the ore. This slow, grinding motion gradually reduced the rock to a workable powder. Below are images showing typical arrastra designs and layouts.
Since arrastras were easy to construct, there were many used throughout the Southwest. Since they were easy to construct, they were also easy to erode and disappear, hence the reason why there are not many good examples of arrastras left. There were mentions of other arrastras being constructed and used around Silver Reef, but there’s no evidence left today of their existence.
Stamp Mills
Stamp mills replaced arrastras just before the era of Silver Reef, about the mid-1800s. As mining operations became bigger, miners could invest more money into creating a larger stamp mill instead of a small arrastra.
In a stamp mill, heavy iron stamps repeatedly rose and fell to crush ore that was fed beneath them by gravity. Each impact broke the rock into finer material until it became a powder. From there, the pulverized ore moved – again by gravity – into the next stage of processing. Many mills were built on a downhill slope, with the structure stepping downward so each phase sat lower than the one before it. Raw ore entered at the top of the mill, and the increasingly refined material progressed downward through each level until the processed metals (silver in Silver Reef’s case) emerged at the bottom.
To mechanize the stamping process, a cam shaft was used to move the stamps up and down. The shaft was driven by steam engine, waterwheel, or even animal power. In later years, gasoline engines were used. Both the Christy and Barbee & Walker Mills utilized steam power. The heat for the steam was derived by burning wood, as explained in the Silver Mining article – Supporting the Mines section. The Stormont Mill in Babylon utilized water from the Virgin River to turn a waterwheel and power the stamps.
Naturally, the more stamps a mill had, the more ore it could process. This is why you’ll hear that a mill was a 5-stamp mill, while another was a 10-stamp mill. During the time of Silver Reef, stamp mills in the Southwest averaged 10-30 stamps. A mill in Park City, Utah, had 80 stamps, an exceptionally large amount for that time. The biggest stamp mill in the Americas was built in 1899 near Juneau, Alaska. It had 300 stamps!
Leaching
Another milling process is called leaching, which utilizes the science (or chemistry) of metallurgy. Ore would literally be soaked in different types of compounds that would leach the valuable metals (i.e., silver, gold, uranium, etc.) out of the ore.
Leaching is a more hazardous milling method because it uses extremely dangerous compounds such as cyanide, ammonia, and various acids. When a mill that uses leaching shuts down, it often leaves behind waste materials that can be harmful to the environment if they aren’t properly cleaned up.
During Silver Reef’s boom years in the 1880s, one mill – the Leeds Mill – later adopted leaching methods. In the first half of the 1900s, several companies attempted to rework the old waste piles around the mines, using different leaching techniques to extract additional silver. However, none of these efforts proved very efficient. The reason why is that the silver was embedded within the Springdale Sandstone and the ore simply didn’t respond well to leaching. Plus, the amount of silver recovered was too low to be profitable.
Steele Mill
The Steele Mill was actually just a standalone arrastra built by an individual named John Steele. The mill is credited as being the first mill in the Silver Reef area to begin milling silver. It was built in early 1876.
The mill was built in nearby Toquerville, about 5 miles to the northeast of Silver Reef. The arrastra utilized water power from neighboring Ash Creek. Steele referred to his mill as a “crushing works”. He paid $400 to have the arrastra built by the Iron City Iron Works located 20 miles west of Cedar City.
The inconsistent waters for Ash Creek proved one of mill’s downfall. The location of the mill was also a considerable distance from the mines in the district. It wasn’t long after 1876 when other mills were built that were more efficient and closer to Silver Reef. This spelled the quick demise of the Steele Mill.
Dupaix and Spicer Mill
In June 1876, another mill was built along Ash Creek in Toquerville, a half mile upstream from Steele’s operation. It utilized a stamp mill with eight stamps and was the first real mill in operation in the Silver Reef area.
For an eight-stamp mill, the construction of the mill was larger than normal. A dam in Ash Creek was built, along with a mill race three-quarters of a mile long that provided enough “head” (height) for the water to drive a waterwheel. After some troubles, the mill became operational mid-1877.
In July 1877, a few of the people that worked on constructing the mill filed an intent to file a “Mechanics and Laborers” lien against the mill for unpaid wages between November 1876 and July 1877 in the amount of $417. By November 1877, Joseph Dupaix was in deep financial trouble and filed for bankruptcy. The mill only processed silver ore for a few months.
After the mill shut down, the Stormont Company purchased the Dupaix & Spicer Mill (there is no definitive record of that) to use its equipment to build the Buckeye Mill later in 1877. The same company would later build the Stormont Mill in Babylon in July 1878, probably using some of the left over material from Dupaix’s mill.
Leeds Mill
In March 1875, the Leeds Mine was established on the west side of the White Reef along the shore of Leeds Creek, roughly one mile southwest of the Silver Reef museum. Since it proved to be a rich deposit, the company that developed the mine built a mill in December 1876. The Leeds Mine was a series of separate, then later, interconnected mines. The mill was built slightly downhill of the mines making it easy to transport the ore.
The mine owners purchased a mill from Bullionville, Nevada (next to current-day Cathedral Gorge State Park) called The Old Maggie and transported all the pieces of it to Silver Reef, about 100 road miles away. It began operating in February 1877.
During 1878, the Leeds Mill milled 12,064 tons of ore with an average grade of 19.42 ounces of silver per ton of ore. Silver recovery averaged at 15.11 ounces per ton of ore, which amounted to 80% of the available silver in the ore was extracted. This meant another 20% was left in the waste rock piles near the mines. This led to companies reworking those piles (as discussed earlier) many decades later after milling technologies improved.
By late 1882, the mill became increasingly inefficient on account of frequent breakdowns of the old equipment acquired from Nevada. It was shut down completely by 1884, spelling the end of the Leeds Mining and Milling Company.
In 1886, the property was purchased by another company, Harding, Bailey and Nesbitt. They converted the mill to a leaching operation. This milling method proved to be unsuccessful due to the presence of green and blue carbonates of copper in the ore. The copper in the ore reacted with the leaching solutions and the silver was lost. By 1887, the new owners also went out of business.
Buckeye (or Pioneer) Mill
As mentioned earlier, the Buckeye Mill was constructed by the Stormont Company in October 1877. The mill was also known as the Pioneer and the Little Mill. Having just three stamps, it was a small operation, so it very quickly developed efficiency problems and subsequently shut down in 1879. The Stormont Company took its equipment and incorporated it into the Stormont Mill (see below), which was currently under construction.
The site of the Buckeye Mill was located south of current-day downtown Leeds. It once stood where the northbound off-ramp (exit 22) for Leeds on Interstate 15 was built on the south side of town.
Christy Mill
The Christy Mill was built by the Christy Mining and Milling Company on the south-end of Silver Reef’s Main Street, just east of Chinatown and slightly north of the Bonanza Flats development. It began operation in January 1878. The mill was steam powered and utilized five stamps. It processed ore primarily from mines on Tecumseh Hill (Buckeye Reef), about a half mile to the south, which reduced hauling costs for the miners.
Managed under the careful eye of Captain Henry S. Lubbock, the mill ran very efficiently. He arrived in Silver Reef in 1876 after working in San Jose, California, in farming, then later in Lincoln, Nevada as a mining superintendent. The title of captain came about because Lubbock was the captain of various ships in the 1850s, including a Confederate gun boat in the Civil War.
In Silver Reef, Lubbock resided in a rock-walled home with attractive gardens that was situated just west of the museum. Several of the home’s walls still stand today. Its remains can be visited along the Silver Reef Walking Tour. Lubbock moved back to the Bay Area of California in 1884.
Before building the mill, the company acquired numerous mining claims from William Tecumseh Barbee, including the valuable Tecumseh property. This ensured that the mill would have plenty of ore to process. Good ore was mined from these properties and subsequently milled in the Christy Mill from 1878, continuing through the end of 1881. During that time, 31,000 tons of ore had been mined, from which 598 bars of silver valued at $1.1 million (1880 dollars) were processed and shipped out.
Captain Lubbock’s wise decision to not lower miners’ wages during the disastrous labor strike of 1881 caused the company to be profitable where others began failing. This encouraged miners to stay with the Christy Company, where miners from other mines left Silver Reef to find work elsewhere.
As explained earlier, the mill was built on a slope for reasons discussed earlier. At the end, tailings were dumped on the south side of the mill, which included a tailings pond. Below is a famous picture taken in 1880 showing the mill with it reflected in the tailings pond.
The company reorganized into the Pinkham and Christy Milling and Mining Company in June of 1882. After the reorganization, the company continued to be well managed, even after Lubbock’s departure, up until its closure in 1889. Today, it is not possible to visit where the Christy Mill once stood as it is on private property. One can only access it with permission from the owner. The tailings and their toxic waste were cleaned up in the late 2000s. There are several foundations still standing.
Barbee & Walker Mill
William Tecumseh Barbee was the one man who probably had the greatest influence on the development of Silver Reef. With the financial backing of the Walker Brothers of Salt Lake City, Barbee began discovering silver deposits and staking claims in 1875 on what would become known as Tecumseh Hill. Barbee is the one responsible for developing many mines in the district.
After selling the claims on and around Tecumseh Hill to the Christy Company discussed previously, Barbee staked a new claim on the White Reef, a mere quarter of a mile west of the Silver Reef museum. Here, he constructed the Barbee & Walker Mill adjacent to the mine of the same name.
The mill was completed in March 1878. It was steam powered and, like the Christy Mill, only had five stamps. It was the only mill built at the mouth or portal of an operating mine. Ore cars from the mine were hosted out of the mine, then the ore was dumped and fed directly into the mill’s stamps. Since the mine and mill were adjacent to each other, the Barbee & Walker didn’t incur ore hauling costs like all of the other mines.
Just after a year in operation, disaster struck in June 1879. A fire started in the stack of cord wood used to fire the boilers and couldn’t be contained. The mill was a total loss. Barbee rebuilt the mill and the entire operation was up and running again in February 1880.
Production from the Barbee and Walker mine was significant and probably exceeded $1 million. Mining conditions were likely more difficult than the other mines because of broken and unstable rock. If you look at the site today and compare to the diggings around Tecumseh Hill, you’ll see the crumbly rock of the White Reef.
Barbee was one of the most influential people in Silver Reef. See the article on William Tecumseh Barbee.
In the 1890s, the property changed ownership a few times. Local St. George merchants Woolley, Lund, and Judd were one of the owners for a spell. Under a new owner in 1893, the operation experienced more success. By 1901, mining and milling was sporadic with the last mill run occurring sometime in 1908. With plans to build a new and larger mill, a new owner dismantled and sold the parts of the mill in 1916. The planned new mill was never built.
Stormont Mill in Babylon
As mentioned, the Stormont Company began building the mill with the same name in 1878. It would become one of the larger producers of the district, simply because it was one of the largest of all the mills with its ten stamps. It was also one of the earliest mills to begin milling ore near Silver Reef.
The small community of Babylon developed next to the mill, providing a place for millworkers and their families to live. See the separate article on Babylon.
The mill’s uniqueness and advantage over other area mills was its use of water power from the neighboring Virgin River. It utilized a maze of mill runs or ditches diverting water from the river to power its stamps. These ditches were constructed following a level path to create an 18 foot “head” (height) to run the waterwheel at the mill. Traces of the old mill race can still be seen today.
The downside of the mill is that ore had to be hauled in from mines near Silver Reef, a distance of about five miles. The Stormont Mill was located on the “East Reef”, meaning on the east side of the Virgin Anticline, where only a few small but close by mines produced enough ore worth milling. This made the Stormont rely on ore from the major Silver Reef mines to stay profitable.
A well-known mining engineer of the 1880s summarized the mines of Silver Reef and provided a description of the Stormont Mill to the Engineering and Mining Journal, a widely distributed publication that ran from 1869 until 1922. The articles he wrote certainly helped the sale of Silver Reef-area mining stock during that time, as people across the USA read the journal. Much of the history we know today about the district’s mines and mills came from that journal.
Timeline
The following is a timeline of the mills that were built around Silver Reef and, later, their demise.
-
Oct 1877
Buckeye or Pioneer Mill Established
This mill was built on the south end of Leeds, where the northbound I-15 off-ramp sits today. Lacking the capacity, it lasts until abut 1880.
-
Jan 1878
Christy Mill
The Christy Mill is completed and located a short distance southeast of central Silver Reef. It begins milling ore primarily from mines on Tecumseh Hill.
Map of Silver Reef Mills
Below is a map of where the mills of the Silver Reef area were located.
Related Information
- The Mines of Silver Reef – Covers the main mines of Silver Reef
- Silver Mining – Explains how silver was mined in Silver Reef