Mining
Mining is the heartbeat of Silver Reef’s origin story. Here, visitors can explore how ore was discovered, extracted, processed, and transported – and why this sandstone‑hosted silver deposit baffled geologists for decades. From early prospecting to large‑scale operations, this topic highlights the techniques, challenges, and personalities that defined the mining era.
Don’t miss the section’s main article: How Silver Was Mined
Articles About Mining
Babylon
Babylon was a community southeast of Silver Reef that sprouted up and supported the large and successful Stormont Mill that was built in 1878. Residents of Babylon were mostly the Stormont’s millworkers and their families. Today, faint relics of the […]
Charcoal Kiln
Many mining areas in the late 1800s utilized beehive-shaped charcoal kilns to slowly burn wood to make charcoal for the smelting of gold and silver ore. Today, places like Death Valley National Park in California and Ward Charcoal Ovens Historical […]
Harrisburg
Harrisburg was a small pioneer settlement tucked into the foothills southeast of Silver Reef, where families built homes along the creek and tried to make a life in the shadow of the red cliffs. Though the town never grew large, […]
John Kemple
Many stories circulate about who first discovered silver in Silver Reef, but the one figure consistently documented as finding silver ore was John Kemple. In 1866, Kemple rode into the Leeds–Harrisburg area during a prospecting journey from Montana. Though he […]
Silver Mining
The chain of events that led to the rise of historic mining towns in the American Southwest often followed a familiar pattern: valuable ore was discovered in predictable geologic settings, but Silver Reef broke that pattern. Here, silver was found […]
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 […]
The Mines of Silver Reef
The mines were where silver-bearing ore was removed from the Earth by hard-rock miners by digging underground tunnels and shafts. Silver ore varied considerably throughout the Silver Reef area and the surrounding Harrisburg Mining District. The Virgin Anticline pushed up […]
Uranium Mining
During the 1950s, Silver Reef also experienced a brief uranium rush. After the end of World War 2 and at the beginning of the Cold War, uranium and similar minerals quickly became in high demand. Since a lot of uranium […]
Virgin Anticline
The mineral‑rich ridges mined at Silver Reef owe their very existence to the long and complex geologic history of the Virgin Anticline. An anticline, unlike its downward‑curving counterpart, the syncline, is a fold in the Earth’s crust that arches upward. […]
William Tecumseh Barbee
Besides John Kemple, the next most significant person responsible for developing Silver Reef into the boom town it became, was William Tecumseh Barbee. With the help (funding) of his partners, Barbee would develop two mining areas in Silver Reef: Tecumseh […]