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Uranium Mining

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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 was being found all over Utah, interest again focused on the mines of Silver Reef. Since these mining efforts took place in the 1950s, many of their remains are still visible today. 

Uranium Mining

In addition to the interest in uranium, new milling technologies were available to extract silver from rock. Across the American West, many companies began “reworking” old mine tailings and waste piles. Located all around Silver Reef’s mines from the 1880s, there were plenty of waste piles to rework and hopefully extract more silver with relative ease because it was just laying there – it just had to be milled.

In 1948, a company called Western Gold & Uranium, Inc. acquired all of Silver Reef’s old mining properties that were earlier consolidated into one property. They begin reworking the tailings and waste piles. Although they were profitable in doing so, the company had more profitable operations elsewhere and concentrated on them.

Western Gold & Uranium made the Wells Fargo Building their office
Western Gold & Uranium made the Wells Fargo Building their office

When the uranium boom of the 1950s began, Western Gold & Uranium began assaying all the mines it owned around Silver Reef for uranium. Vanadium, another sought-after mineral during the atomic age, was also found. They located two silver-uranium ore bodies within the Leeds Reef, an area where silver was not previously mined.

In 1955, Western Gold & Uranium built a mine on what was to be called Paulmar Hill (also called Big Hill) on the Leeds Reef. It’s called the Anne’s Pride Mine. This is the mine and headframe seen today on the left side of main road when heading up to Silver Reef. The vertical shaft goes down 140 feet. Several thousand tons of silver and uranium ore were brought up from the underground workings. Another vertical shaft and small headframe is also visible close by along the paved road.

The two headframes located on Paulmar Hill are the only remaining headframes in the entire Silver Reef mining area. In the 1880s, many headframes like this, all constructed of wood, were located all over. There was also a very large steel headframe located on the White Reef that was built in the late 1920s, then fell down in 1948 .

Uranium Mining
The Anne’s Pride Mine built on the side of Paulmar Hill
Uranium Mining
Side view of Anne’s Pride Mine – Silver Reef in background
Uranium Mining
An aerial side view of Anne’s Pride Mine
Uranium Mining
The small headframe located east of Anne’s Pride Mine
Uranium Mining
The vertical shaft below the small headframe is covered for safety

In 1956, Western Gold & Uranium built a flotation mill just across the draw from the Barbee & Walker site. It processed ore from both the Anne’s Pride mine and from the tailings laying around Silver Reef. The mill produced silver-copper concentrates, along with uranium-vanadium-copper concentrates. These concentrates were then shipped to another mill near Salt Lake City, where the next refining step took place to extract the pure metals (the silver and uranium).

The mill is still standing and can be closely examined on the walking tour. It’s the only example of an actual mill still existing near Silver Reef as of 2026. Just like the historic silver mills, this mill was also built on a slope. The ore bin can still be examined where truckloads of ore were dumped to begin the milling process. The next phase down was some type of rock crusher, then it went further down into the mill to complete the process. The concentrates came out at the bottom of the mill.

Uranium Mining
Remains of the mill as seen on the edge of the overlook to the Barbee & Walker Mine
Uranium Mining
Closer view of the mill
Uranium Mining
Where the trucks dumped the ore into the mill
Uranium Mining
Another view of the side of the mill ruins
Uranium Mining
Looking down into the ore bin

Related Information

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Virgin Anticline

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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. This arching structure is clearly illustrated in the accompanying black and white diagram.

NOTE: This webpage loads two large animations and may take a few moments to load.

Virgin Anticline

Anticlines and synclines form when rock layers are pushed, stretched, or compressed by tectonic forces. Anticlines and synclines are common geologic features found all over the world. When a moving landmass encounters a barrier – much like a rug being pushed up against a wall – the layers buckle and fold.

Example of a anticline's formation - a rug being pushed up against a wall
Example of a anticline’s formation – a rug being pushed up against a wall

In the case of the Virgin Anticline, the crust between California’s Sierra Nevada and the Hurricane Fault was being pulled apart. The landmass stretching from central Nevada toward Silver Reef acted like the “rug”, moving eastward until it met the Hurricane Fault, which served as the immovable wall. Just short of that fault, the rock layers gave way and folded upward, forming the Virgin Anticline.

When this uplift occurred, the entire sequence of local rock layers – from the striped Moenkopi Formation to the massive Navajo Sandstone that shapes Zion Canyon – was pushed upward together. Over millions of years, erosion removed the upper layers, exposing the upturned strata we see today and leaving the hollow center of the anticline, now occupied by Quail Creek Reservoir.

The following shows layers above anticline before erosion and the anticline’s center behind Quail Creek Reservoir:

Virgin Anticline
Approximate location of upper rock layers before erosion
Virgin Anticline
Center point or axis of anticline on north side of reservoir
Virgin Anticline
Closer look at anticline’s axis
Virgin Anticline
Reservoir seen from atop anticline’s western edge or rib

Silver Reef Connection

As the anticline rose, the Springdale Sandstone – the layer that hosts Silver Reef’s silver ore – was tilted into long, narrow ridges. These ridges, which roughly parallel today’s I‑15 corridor, were called “reefs” by early settlers because of their sharp, wave‑like appearance. These reefs were barriers to their travel, just like coral reefs in oceans were barriers to boats. See the What is a Reef? article to learn more.

Many of Silver Reef’s mines were driven directly into the sides of these reefs, while others used underground shafts to reach the angled Springdale Sandstone beneath the surface. See the Silver Mining at Silver Reef article to learn more about the importance of Springdale Sandstone.

Without the formation of the Virgin Anticline many millions of years ago, the silver‑bearing sandstone would never have been exposed or accessible. The erosion that shaped the anticline’s modern form occurred gradually over the last 30 million years, revealing the ore-hosting layers that made Silver Reef a viable mining district in the late 1800s.

Interact with the following to reveal Silver Reef’s location in relation to the anticline and its various features by hovering your mouse cursor over each pulsating dot.

Virgin Anticline

Epilog

So, understanding the Virgin Anticline adds another essential piece to the story of how Silver Reef came to be. With a little geological awareness, the evidence of uplift, folding, and erosion is still visible today in the hills and ridges surrounding the historic mining district, a landscape shaped by deep time and revealed by the forces that brought Silver Reef’s mineral wealth to the surface.

What signs of the anticline can you spot in the hills around you today?

Virgin Anticline
Location of reefs behind Silver Reef
Virgin Anticline
White Reef with mines in center, Red Reef in the upper-left
Virgin Anticline
White Reef looking north – Silver Reef town in right center
Virgin Anticline
Back (west) side of White Reef – former mines in center
Virgin Anticline
Remains of Stormont Mill and Babylon amongst uplift of Virgin Anticline

Article content by Cliff Bandringa, edited by Kathy Powell

Related Information

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Hurricane Fault

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The Hurricane Fault is one of the largest, longest, and most active faults of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. Its nearest rival is the famous San Andreas Fault in California, about 200 miles to the southwest. Although the Hurricane Fault is not the boundary of two tectonic plates on the Earth’s surface (the North American and Pacific plates) like the San Andreas, it is the boundary between three of the significant ecosystems of the American Southwest.

Hurricane Fault

The Hurricane Fault is also referred to as the Hurricane Cliffs, simply because the fault created a sizable escarpment along its northern segment. The escarpment is what’s also commonly referred to as a fault scarp.

The towering Hurricane Cliffs (Hurricane Fault) near Anderson Junction (I-15 and Utah 17)

Hurricane Fault

Hurricane Fault, near the town of its namesake, the town of Hurricane, Utah

Hurricane Fault

The Fault’s Mark on the Landscape

Unlike the San Andreas, the Hurricane Fault is easy to find as it left a big mark on the Earth’s surface. From the south, it begins near Peach Springs, Arizona, just south of where Route 66 crosses it. To the north, it ends near the town of Paragonah, Utah. For roughly half its length, heavily traveled Interstate 15 parallels the fault’s trace — not by coincidence, but because the fault created a natural corridor that made road construction far easier.

South of the Colorado River, the fault and the river follows the same course for several miles, creating a small portion of the larger Grand Canyon. As the river heads west, the fault continues its southern course creating Peach Springs Canyon that contains the only road where vehicles can drive down into the Grand Canyon all the way to the river.

Location of the Hurricane Fault
Location of the Hurricane Fault

Geologic Overview

The Hurricane Fault is classified as a normal fault. This means that the land on one side of the fault is dropping, while the land on the other side is rising. It’s the abrupt higher edge on the one side of the fault that is called a fault scarp. In comparison, the San Andreas Fault is a “strike-slip fault”. This means that the land on each side of the fault is sliding horizontally past the other in opposite directions.

Cross section of a normal fault like Hurricane Fault
Cross section of a normal fault like Hurricane Fault
Cross section of a strike-slip fault like the San Andreas
Cross section of a strike-slip fault like the San Andreas

With the Hurricane Fault, the Colorado Plateau side, the east side, has risen significantly. According to geologists, the Colorado Plateau has risen about a mile in less than 100 million years. Evidence of this can be seen from Silver Reef by seeing certain geologic formations, such as Navajo Sandstone formation, sitting on one elevation near Babylon in the foreground and on the west side of the fault, where the same formation is sitting far in the background (inside Zion National Park) on the east side of the fault about 5,000 feet higher (5,280 feet equal a mile).

The Hurricane Cliffs, the fault scarp, formed from repeated earthquakes over a span of 850,000 years, one earthquake at a time. With every earthquake, the western side of the fault dropped while the eastern side rose, around 5 to 10 feet per earthquake. The fault remains active today and can produce damaging earthquakes up to about magnitude 7.0. It was responsible for the 1992 magnitude 5.8 St. George earthquake, although that particular event occurred on the nearby, parallel Washington Fault.

Through the Washington County area — including Silver Reef, St. George, and Hurricane — there has been no recent movement on the Hurricane Fault itself. If the fault had slipped within the past thousand years, there would be a small waterfall or cascade where the Virgin River and other streams cross the fault trace. The absence of these features indicates that this segment has been quiet for some time.

Hurricane Fault

Hurricane Fault near Silver Reef – hover mouse over pulsating dots to reveal places

Location of Hurricane Fault - yellow circle marks location of Anderson Junction
Location of Hurricane Fault – yellow circle marks location of Anderson Junction

Black Ridge & Black Ledge

One very interesting portion of the Hurricane Fault is Black Ledge, which is part of the larger Black Ridge, also known as the Kanarra Fold. This is the portion of the Hurricane Cliffs between the towns of Toquerville and Pintura. Black Ridge is named after the black basalt (lava) flow that caps the top of the cliffs. This ledge holds important clues to the origin of this towering escarpment.

Specifically, Black Ledge, is the thin cap of basalt seen above Anderson Junction (intersection of I-15 and SR 17 or exit 27). This can be seen by looking northeast from the Wells Fargo building in Silver Reef. A group of radio tours sit on top of Black Ledge.

Black Ledge is part of the Pintura lava flow, which erupted from a cinder cone or fissure just near Pintura, five miles north of Anderson Junction. Like all lava flows acting similar to liquid, it flowed downhill, following the Ash Creek drainage all the way to the Virgin River in Hurricane, a distance of 12 miles.

Geologists dated the lava flow using sophisticated radiometric techniques that measure the natural radioactive decay of trace amounts of uranium in the rock, determining that it erupted about 850,000 years ago. At the time of the eruption, the large escarpment we see today did not yet exist; instead, easily eroded strata — primarily the Triassic‑aged Moenkopi and Chinle Formations — covered the area before the east side of the fault began to rise. As a result, the lava was able to flow eastward across the fault as well as southward down towards the Virgin River.

During the 850,000 years after the eruption, reoccurring earthquakes on the Hurricane Fault have displaced the lava flow about 1,200 feet vertically, leaving remnants perched high on the cliffs. Knowing how much of the rock was offset by the faulting (1,200 feet), and knowing the age of the flow (850,000 years old), it is a simple matter to calculate a long-term average rate of displacement on the fault of nearly two feet per thousand years. Two feet per thousand years may not seem like much, but it adds up given enough time. This may mean that earthquakes along this portion of the fault only occurred every one to two thousand years. In comparison, earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault, depending on the location, occurs every one to three hundred years.

The Grand Canyon Connection

The escarpment above Anderson Junction consists of yellowish-brown sandstone and gray limestone and reveals a much older part of Utah’s geological history as compared to the geology around Zion National Park. The sedimentary layers exposed and visible on the side of the escarpment contain the oldest rocks exposed in southwest Utah. The sandstone is a former subtropical beach deposit that was flooded and ultimately buried by fossiliferous limestone as an ancient sea floor that migrated across the continent nearly 300 million years ago.

We know that the sandstone and limestone were deposited in a warm, subtropical ocean because of the fossils and sedimentary structures they contain. The limestone contains fossil invertebrates such as brachiopods, crinoids, corals, bryozoans, and sponges that once lived in coral reef communities similar to those of the modern Bahamas. This limestone belongs to what geologists call the Toroweap and Kaibab Formations. These same formations appear in the Grand Canyon near the top of the north and south rims, as pointed out below.

Hurricane Fault

Use your mouse to click and hold over the vertical bar, then slide back and forth to reveal the geographic formations in the same stratigraphic order between the Hurricane Fault at Anderson Junction and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon just below Maricopa Point.

Hurricane FaultHurricane Fault

The following are the geologic formations at the same stratigraphic levels at both locations.

(A) – Kaibab Limestone Formation
(B) – Toroweap Formation
(C) – Coconino Sandstone Formation / Queantoweap Sandstone
(D) – Hermit Formation / Pakoon Dolomite

The same four geologic formations exposed and visible below Black Ledge are also exposed in the Virgin Gorge, 35 miles to the southwest. Driving I-15 south of St. George through Arizona is a great way to see similar geologic layers and formations that also exist in the top half of the Grand Canyon.

Pintura & Kanara Anticline

If you look carefully, you can see that the layers of sandstone and limestone in the escarpment are tilted to the east. They are part of a long fold geologists call an anticline—an upwarp in the rocks that formed about 100 million years ago during a mountain-building episode called the Sevier orogeny. This is the Kanarra anticline (not to be confused with the Virgin anticline), which extends nearly 40 miles from Toquerville on the south to Cedar City on the north.

The Sevier orogeny was a major mountain‑building episode that affected a broad region from Mexico to Canada, passing directly through central Utah. An orogeny is a tectonic process in which sections of the Earth’s crust are compressed, folded, and deformed—typically by lateral (horizontal) forces—resulting in the uplift and formation of mountain ranges.

The only part of the fold exposed today is its east limb—the fold’s crest and its west limb are down-dropped to the west by the Hurricane Fault where they are hidden (buried) by younger deposits. Still, the east limb preserves amazing evidence of that mountain building event. Compressional deformation was so intense that in places the east limb of the fold is overturned and strata are cut by faults that helped to accommodate tight folding in the core of the anticline.

Interestingly, the Hurricane Fault here has reactivated a part of the pre-existing fault that formed the Kanarra anticline. The Kanarra anticline formed above what geologists call a blind thrust fault, where rocks were incrementally shoved eastward, one earthquake at a time over the span of several million years, forming a fold, much like the folds of an area rug that crumples in front of a sliding child.

When the Hurricane Fault was forming about 15 to 20 million years ago, it took advantage of this pre-existing break in the rocks. Just like flowing water creating canyons by following the path of least resistance, faults form by cracking through rock layers with the least resistance. The Hurricane Fault is the largest of several large faults that broke apart the west margin of the Colorado Plateau. These faults formed beginning and are a direct result of the birth of the San Andreas fault system at the western margin of North America. Movement of the San Andreas fault ultimately caused extension throughout the America Southwest. The Hurricane and its sister faults reflect the eastward edge of that extensional deformation.

Epilog

Having such a significant geologic feature—the Hurricane Fault—so close to Silver Reef makes the surrounding landscape even more dramatic and rewarding to explore. Now that you’re armed with a deeper understanding of the area’s geologic story, I hope you’ll venture out and see how the pieces of this landscape puzzle fit together. With this new perspective, the cliffs, canyons, and valleys around Silver Reef take on an entirely new meaning.

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John Kemple

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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 never struck a major bonanza, he was an exceptionally skilled prospector and assayer, able to read rock the way others read a map.

John Kemple

Not far from where he was staying in Harrisburg, he recognized a specimen known to contain silver — with one complication. The ore was embedded in sandstone, a rock type widely believed at the time to be incapable of hosting precious minerals. That single contradiction set off a chain of events that would ignite the rush to Silver Reef.

John Kemple was born December 11, 1835 in New Jersey. He was the only son and second of six children of George Kemple and Hannah Foster. The family moved to West Virginia and then Marshall, Virginia, by 1840. His mother died when he was ten, and his father remarried and had seven more children. On the 1850 census, he was living with his family in Marshall, Virginia. He had difficulty getting along with his stepmother, so in 1850 he left for California’s gold rush at age fifteen.

John Kemple

A biography of John by his great grandson includes the following: “John followed up every new camp that was started but never found the big one. He joined the rush to Alaska and the Klondike gold fields but was also unsuccessful there. One year in Alaska he was so far north that winter caught his party on the polar ice pack. They would have starved, except that he discovered a mammoth, frozen in the ice. They managed to dig in far enough to cut meat from the pre-historic beast and eat it. He told also of another, smaller figure, deeper in the ice, which he said looked like a human. A few years later he tried to lead a scientific expedition back to the place but couldn’t find it again.”

In 1866, John rode into the Leeds-Harrisburg area with a small string of horses, on a prospecting journey from Montana. He rented a room with the Orson Adams family of Harrisburg for the winter. John had assay equipment with him, and probably assayed materials that seemed to hold possible ores. In the spring of that year, he left for White Pine (near Ely), Nevada. He sent some ore samples from Harrisburg to another assayer, H. H. Smith of Beaver County, Utah. Smith refused to assay it, claiming: “Kemple must be crazy to ask me to assay a sand rock”. John found silver float that assayed over $17,000 per ton. However, he didn’t seem to know its source.

  See the separate article on Harrisburg
John Kemple
John Kemple
This type of sandstone rock contains "horn silver", similar to what Kemple found
This type of sandstone rock contains “horn silver”, similar to what Kemple found

Reminiscing many years later, John visited David McMullin in his blacksmith shop at Leeds and told the story of his life. He asked, “Dave, you remember that soap-stone vein in the White Reef on the north side of the pass through which Quail creek flows, and is now covered with a swamp? You got soap-stone there and made slate pencils. That is where I got the ore from which I extracted the silver button I showed you nearly forty years ago. The soap-stone assayed 36 ounces in silver”.

Returning to Harrisburg to spend the winter again in 1868, Kemple made more silver discoveries. Most of the ore he found was in the flat area near Quail Creek and east of the White Reef. The ore was simply scattered around. Knowing that the ore probably fell and rolled down from a possible vein at a higher location, he started searching the area nearer the mountains to the west.

John Kemple

Makes First Mining Claim

Finally, in February 1871, after finding the source of the silver ore, Kemple made his first mining claim on a ledge just a half mile northeast from the current entrance station to the Red Cliffs Recreation Area. That same month, Kemple and several others organized the Union Mining District. Between February 1871 and October 1872, a total of 16 claims were recorded in the district. Shortly after, Federal mining laws changed, so they reorganized the district with a new chapter and renamed it the Harrisburg Mining District. This would be the district that Silver Reef was known for being in.

After the district was reorganized, Kemple made a more official mining claim in 1874. Others followed suit and, interestingly, many of the new claims were made in the names of wives from Harrisburg and Leeds. The reason for this was possibly a way men could make claims to potential riches, while not upsetting stern direction from the church’s leader, Brigham Young, who was against members of the church from practicing the extraction of valuable minerals (other than coal or iron) on account of it not being a sustainable way to make a living.

John married in 1874 and became a member of the Mormon Church. He and his wife moved to Silver Reef just as the rush was beginning the following year, where he was employed in the mines. In 1879, he moved his family north to Beaver County.

Still infected with the prospecting bug, Kemple moved his family again in 1891, this time to White Hills, Arizona, halfway between Hoover Dam and Kingman. It wasn’t long before he was broke and asking around for “grubstakes” to fund his next mining venture. Unable to support his family, which by now included five children, his wife divorced him.

Shortly after his divorce, Kemple really did strike it rich from a gold and silver discovery nearby. It became known as Kemple Camp and can be found on a map today. Kemple continued to live in this area and passed away in Kingman on October 14, 1918 and buried in the Kingman Cemetery.

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Harrisburg

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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, its story is one of determination, faith, and survival in a rugged landscape. This article offers a welcoming introduction to the people who lived in Harrisburg, the challenges they faced, and the traces of their community that can still be found today.

Harrisburg

The Beginnings

The story of Silver Reef begins with the neighboring towns of Harrisburg and Leeds. In 1859, after spending the winter near the town of Washington (next to St. George), the Harris party, which consisted of nine families, selected a site near the confluence of Quail Creek. This site is now covered by Quail Creek Reservoir. This site proved to be unsuccessful because the land was only marginal and was difficult to irrigate. A disastrous fire added to the discouragement and, in 1860, the families moved away.

However, a year later, the families returned. This time however, they selected another site to settle three miles up the creek. They later called it Harrisburg. Today, this is the general area where Quail Creek passes underneath Interstate 15.

The site they picked was more level, the warm climate was ideal, and was located along a well-traveled wagon road, which would later become US 91 and, later still, I-15. By 1862, friends and family of the original party joined them, and the population of Harrisburg grew to 41. By 1864, the population grew to 16 families or 128 people.

Harrisburg Ditch

1865 or 66 a diversion dam was built about a mile north of current day Silver Reef. It diverted water out of Leeds Creek and into a 5-mile-long irrigation canal ending in Harrisburg. The water greatly helped farming but the soil was still too rocky and there wasn’t much room for the farms to expand.

By 1867, the Harrisburg settlers that a place called Road Valley, just to the north, was more suitable for farming and was closer to the water source of the Harrisburg Ditch. Slowly, families began to relocate to Road Valley, which would later become named Bennington, then in 1869, the town was renamed to Leeds.

The Adams Home

Today, two houses remain from Harrisburg’s heyday of the early 1860s. One is the Jolly Home that’s seen near the entrance of the Harrisburg Estate Community along Old Hwy 91. The other is the Adams House that’s seen along the road leading up to the Red Cliffs Recreation Area.

The Adams House, built in 1863, played a significant role in the discovery of silver at Silver Reef. This is the house that attracted prospector John Kemple to spend the winter. He would go on to dig one of the first silver mines in the area near the Adams House.

  See the separate article on John Kemple and his discovery of silver

Today, the Adams House is preserved by the BLM and the Red Cliffs Reserve. There are still fixtures in its interior.

Harrisburg
The Jolly Home located along Old Hwy 91
Harrisburg
The Adams House – Red Reef in background
Harrisburg
Ruins of Harrisburg and a movie set from the 1950s

Map

Location of Harrisburg, along with other nearby sites, in relation to the town of Silver Reef. Click points on map to reveal locations of Harrisburg-related places.

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Museum Exhibits

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Inside and around the Silver Reef Museum, there are many interesting artifacts and exhibits to discover. This article outlines the exhibits you can look forward to during your visit and shows where they are located throughout the different rooms of the museum, including the displays downstairs and outside. You’ll also find a virtual walking tour video of the museum included in this article.

Museum Exhibits
The Silver Reef Museum – Wells Fargo & Company Express Office
The Silver Reef Museum – Wells Fargo & Company Express Office

Introduction

Our museum docents will introduce you to the Silver Reef Museum and give you a look around inside.

Virtual Walkthrough

Watch this video to see a detailed walkthrough of the entire museum, as well as the diorama room.

Entrance & Stagecoach Display

When you enter the museum, a docent will be at the front desk to welcome you. They can provide information about the tour options and assist you with the entrance fee.

The sculpture of the Wells Fargo stagecoach on the right is a replica of the stagecoaches that used to serve Silver Reef and were operated by Wells, Fargo & Company. Half of the building where the museum is now located was once a Wells, Fargo & Company Express office. Stagecoaches would stop right outside the door.

The sculpture was created by local Western sculptor Jerry Anderson. In the 1990s, Anderson had his art studio inside the museum building. As the museum expanded, he moved his studio across the street to his home, which is just a short walk from the museum.

Mining Exhibit

The next room houses the museum’s Silver in Sandstone Exhibit that focuses on mining. A docent will point out what’s on display and demonstrate the exhibits that move, such as the model of a stamp mill. There are also several samples of silver ore that came out of the hills nearby.

To the right is a replica of a bar similar to those that were probably built in 11 of the saloons around Silver Reef. Look on the bar for smaller exhibits and brochures.

What’s in the Exhibit

Hover or click on any of the pulsating dots to reveal what’s on display.

Museum Exhibits
Ore samples taken from area mines – the left sample being the sandstone silver was found in
Ore samples taken from area mines – the left sample being the sandstone silver was found in

Artifact Room

Passing through the door on the right past the stagecoach will lead you into the Artifact Room. Here you’ll find artifacts mainly from the town itself, not related to mining. The exhibits seen in this room will give you a glimpse of what life was like during Silver Reef’s boom years.

Artifacts include various items found around the townsite, such as bottles, plates, pieces of clothing, and tin cans. You’ll also find the old built-in safe that was part of the Wells Fargo Express Office, along with smaller safes that were used on stagecoaches. Additionally, there are examples of guns and weapons that were common during the Old West era.

Museum Exhibits
Displays in the Artifact Room
Museum Exhibits
The Artifact Room
Museum Exhibits
Pull-out drawers in the Artifact Room reveal smaller artifacts
Museum Exhibits
Display case with recovered bottles

Geology Room

Next, we’ll go through a smaller room that features the geology exhibit. Here, you can see a geologic map of the Silver Reef area, some examples of dinosaur fossils discovered nearby, and a map showing all the mining claims from the 1880s in the area.

Clothing Display

Just beyond the geology room, you’ll find a small room with display cases showcasing some of the clothes people wore during the time of Silver Reef. Close by, there’s a listening station where you can hear stories from some of the town’s former residents.

Gift Shop & Bookstore

Finally, there’s the museum’s gift shop and bookstore. It’s located at the back of the museum, behind the mining exhibit.

In the display cases, a variety of gifts will be found, including silver coins, jewelry, art, games and other miscellaneous items.

Here, you’ll find books covering geology, mining and the history of both Silver Reef and the surrounding Washington County area. There’s also a selection of children’s books covering topics on ghost towns, the Old West, and dinosaurs.

Museum Exhibits
Gift shop counter
Museum Exhibits
Items in the gift shop
Museum Exhibits
A collection of books are available in the gift shop

Underground Mine Exhibit

Below, in the museum’s basement, is an underground mine exhibit offering an immersive glimpse into what it was like to work digging for silver. Check with the docent to learn when this special exhibit is available for touring. All tours of this exhibit require a docent.

Museum Exhibits
Underground mining exhibit
Museum Exhibits
Displays on modern-day mining in the exhibit

Diorama

Located behind and on the side of the museum in a separate small building is a diorama of what the old town of Silver Reef used to look like. Called the Cassidy Powder House, it is a reconstruction of a building used for storing explosives. Today though, it’s used for housing the diorama, plus models of the area’s silver mills. You’ll also find a large map of the mining claims around Silver Reef.

Museum Exhibits
Dioramas are located in the Cassidy Powder House next to the museum
Museum Exhibits
Diorama of main street in Silver Reef
Museum Exhibits
Model of the Stormont Mill
Museum Exhibits
Model of the Barbee & Walker Mine & Mill

Outside Exhibits

Next to the museum and the Cassidy Powder House is a collection of outdoor exhibits. These consist of mining equipment such as ore cars, wagons, compressors, various gears and wheels, basically all kinds of components that made up a mining or milling operation.

Directly across the street from the mining equipment is a wishing well. This serves as a kiosk that explains the surrounding area. There’s also a series of viewing pipes that point out specific places, such as Tecumseh Hill.

Museum Exhibits
Outdoor exhibits next to the museum building
Museum Exhibits
Outdoor exhibits
Museum Exhibits
Mine ore cars
Museum Exhibits
Viewpoint and kiosk across street from museum

Walking Tour

Another outdoor exhibit you shouldn’t miss is the walking tour through the old town of Silver Reef. See the Walking Tour article to learn more.

Museum Exhibits
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Cemeteries

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Between Silver Reef, Leeds and Harrisburg, there were a total of five cemeteries, four of which that can still be visited today. Mostly Mormons were buried in the Leeds cemetery located on the southwest side of town. Most people associated with the Silver Reef boom years were buried in either the Catholic or Protestant cemetery. There was also a Chinese cemetery.

Cemeteries

About the Cemeteries

During those years, members of the Catholic church outnumbered the others, including members of the more prominent Mormon church, mainly because of the large number of Irish people working in the mines and mills. A fair number of people were splintered between the various Protestant denominations such as Presbyterian. The cemetery in Harrisburg consisted mostly of people from the Mormon Church.

The Chinese established their own cemetery. Archeological evidence suggests its location was adjacent to and on the east side of the Catholic cemetery. After Silver Reef declined, all the bodies were exhumed and sent to China, as it is their belief that their deceased should rest in their homeland.

According to records, the Catholic cemetery has 3 graves with tombstones and 15 graves with “unknown markers, whereas the Protestant cemetery has 11 graves with tombstones and 32 graves with “unknown” markers.

The Catholic and Protestant cemeteries were restored by the Leeds Lion’s Club in 1998. Much of the white picket fences and walls you see today were constructed then.

Cemeteries
The dirt road leading to the Protestant cemetery
Cemeteries
Protestant Cemetery
Cemeteries
Catholic Cemetery
Cemeteries
Entrance to Leeds Cemetery

Visiting the Cemeteries

All of the cemeteries are open and can be visited. Below is a map pointing out all four cemeteries.

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Silver Mining

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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 in sandstone—a geologic surprise that set this district apart. Nowhere else in the Americas has minable quantities of valuable ore been found in sandstone.

Silver Mining

There are many “pieces to the puzzle” that together form the Silver Reef mining district. As you scroll through this article, you’ll learn how each piece came to be and how they ultimately combined to create the landscape and mining history you see today when visiting Silver Reef.

In This Article

To fully understand the unique silver mining process here at Silver Reef, we suggest you read this article in its entirety, plus the related articles. If you are looking for a specific topic, select on of the options below to jump to that topic.

Setting the Stage

Several geologic processes needed to take place before silver was created and then found by prospectors. The following explains each of those processes.

Transition Zone

The Silver Reef mining area is located inside a transition zone of two well-known geologic provinces in the Southwest – the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range. Geologic influences from both provinces can be found all around the St. George area. See the article covering Southwest Utah’s Triple Junction of Landscapes to learn more about this specifically.

Location of Colorado Plateau and Basin & Range Provinces
Location of Colorado Plateau and Basin & Range Provinces

Hurricane Fault

The boundary between these two provinces is the Hurricane Fault. East of this natural divide lies the orderly, horizontal sedimentary layers of the Colorado Plateau. West of the fault, those same layers have been bent, tilted, and distorted by tectonic forces that acted long after the sediments were originally deposited. This deformation has tipped some layers upward and exposed them at the surface, making it easy to examine their outcropped rocky composition.

Silver Reef sits just west of the Hurricane Fault. The fault line is visible by looking east out of the museum’s front door. See the article on the Hurricane Fault that explains more of its significance to this area and how it set into motion the geologic events that would lead to the creation of silver.

Location of the Hurricane Fault in relation to Silver Reef
Location of the Hurricane Fault in relation to Silver Reef

Springdale Sandstone

One of those sedimentary layers on both sides of the fault is called the Springdale Sandstone. It’s named after the town of Springdale at the foot of Zion Canyon. The layer is about 100 feet (30 m) thick. In Springdale and in the beginning of the canyon, it can easily be made out as a short reddish vertical cliff just above the base of the mountains. The Springdale Sandstone is a subunit of the larger Kayenta Formation. The other subunit of the Kayenta lays above the Springdale Sandstone and consists of thinner, rocky layers and typically erodes into cliffs that are not as vertical.

Silver Mining
Springdale Sandstone
Silver Mining
Springdale Sandstone at mouth of Zion Canyon, Utah
Silver Mining
Springdale Sandstone above the town of Sandstone – arrows point out location

That same Springdale Sandstone layer extends west across the Hurricane Fault. The layer takes on a more white or cream color tint and is often seen tilted at a roughly 30 degree angle. Long ridges can be seen all around Silver Reef that are tilted up in similar directions. These ridges are known as reefs. See the article named What is a Reef? to learn more about how reefs have historically influenced Utah.

Virgin Anticline

Most of the other sedimentary layers above and below the Springdale Sandstone were also tilted. This tilting was done by yet another piece to Silver Reef’s geologic puzzle, the Virgin Anticline. This was an upwarp in the Earth’s surface that was created by crustal extension between the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range in California and the Hurricane Fault. Just like what happens when one pushes a loose carpet into a wall, a portion of it folds up. The same thing happened with the Earth’s surface as it was pushed against the Hurricane Fault. See the article on the Virgin Anticline to learn how it too has influenced everything going on at Silver Reef.

Silver Mining
North end of Virgin Anticline – Quail Creek Reservoir in foreground
Silver Mining
Center point of Virgin Anticline
Silver Mining
Eroded layers above Virgin Anticline

Hover mouse over red-pulsating dot to reveal a location the Virgin Anticline

Silver Mining

Finally, after all the geologic processes described above, the silver‑bearing ore somehow formed within the Springdale Sandstone through chemical reactions that are not yet fully understood. The best current interpretation is that, before the sandstone was uplifted, tilted, and exposed, it was influenced by heat from magma beneath the Earth’s surface—possibly related to the nearby Pine Valley Mountains—and later altered by circulating groundwater. Whatever combination of forces was responsible, the result was remarkable: Silver Reef became one of the only places on Earth where precious metals formed inside sandstone.

Where the Silver is Mined

Rocks with silver chloride from these exposed reefs tumbled off them and on to a flat surface, where a prospector named John Kemple discovered them in 1866. Kemple was puzzled because, as a prospector, he knew finding silver in sandstone wasn’t possible, or has never been found before. After further searching, and with considerable effort to convince others, the source of those silver‑bearing rocks were traced to those uptilted reefs.

It wasn’t until 1875 when actual mining began. Shortly after, the word was out and the silver rush was on. People from all over, mainly from the nearby silver mining town of Pioche, Nevada, came to Silver Reef and began filing their own mining claims. Most of those claims were made on top of the reefs described in the What is a Reef? article.

Inside the layers of Springdale Sandstone is where the silver-bearing rock formed. It formed into what miners call a “lens”, simply because it’s shaped like a glass lens. Lenses are also referred to as “seams” and “ore bodies”. It’s these lenses that miners would ultimately dig into and extract silver-bearing rock.

Cross section of White or Buckeye Reef
Cross section of White or Buckeye Reef

Silver Reef sits near an odd junction of where three reefs somehow got geologically separated. The main or primary reef is called the White Reef and can be traced from behind the Silver Reef museum, then south paralleling I-15 for six miles. The reef that broke off is called the Buckeye Reef. Next to the Buckeye is the Leeds Reef. All of these reefs are layers of Springdale Sandstone and tilted in the same direction on account of the Virgin Anticline.

Below is a short repeating video showing the location of all three reefs.

Silver Mining

After Kample’s discovery, mines would be developed in all of these reefs. Mines were later developed a few miles southeast of Silver Reef, on the other side of the Virgin Anticline, where similar reefs were tilted up in the opposite direction. This would become known as the Babylon section of the Silver Reef mining district.

How the Silver was Mined

In order to extract the ore, miners dug shafts (tunnels) into the reefs, usually horizontally. These horizontal shafts are called adits. Miners also dug vertical shafts, some straight down and others at steep angles. These were called vertical shafts and inclines, respectively. Below are examples of such mine openings that can be found around Silver Reef.

Silver Mining
Inclined shaft (not vertical)
Silver Mining
Adit – horizontal mine entrance
Silver Mining
Headframe – usually placed over a vertical shaft

Where the ore body or lens was located inside the Springdale Sandstone, a “stope” would be dug, which is basically a large cavity inside the sandstone. The rock that was inside the stope would be carried out, using ore cars that were pulled by mules, and deposited into a rock pile outside the mine.

The following diagram shows the various features of a typical mine, including either an adit or a shaft, a stope, different horizontal diggings referred to as “levels” where a lot of the digging work took place, and headframes that hoisted the ore from the stope out to the surface.

Silver Mining

Below is map and cross-section of the Barbee-Walker Mine showing it’s various levels and stoped out areas. It was published in newspapers and mining journals of the day (in the 1880s). The deepest level of the mine was the 500 Level, which meant the mine went down 500 feet (150 meters). This cross-section can be found in the book described below.

Map and cross-section of the Barbee-Walker's underground workings
Map and cross-section of the Barbee-Walker’s underground workings

Rock that did not contain silver ore was dumped near the mine entrance. These piles of discarded rock became the tell‑tale clue that a mine opening of some kind is nearby. They are often mistakenly called “tailings,” but the correct term is “waste piles”. Tailings are similar accumulations of leftover material, but they form at mills, where ore is crushed and processed—the next stop for any silver‑bearing rock.

How You Can Learn More

Much of the information about the mining in Silver Reef was obtained from the book Silver, Sinners and Saints, A History of Old Silver Reef, Utah. To learn more about the mining that occurred here, as well as the history behind Silver Reef in general, purchase your own copy of this book at the Silver Reef museum book store.

Silver Mining

How Miners Dug Ore

In the 1870s, digging the shafts, levels and stopes required cutting into solid rock using either “single-jacking” or “double-jacking” methods. Many miners that immigrated to the USA specifically to work in the mines were Cornish (people of Cornish descent from Cornwall, England). Cornish miners earned the name “Jack”. This is where the “jacking” term came from.

Single-jacking consisted of one man (a single “Jack”) working alone with a short hammer and a hand-held drill bit. The miner would strike the drill with the hammer, rotate the drill a few degrees, then strike it again. This process was repeated again and again. Even the hardest of rocks yielded to these persistent poundings and turning of the bit.

Double-jacking consisted of two men (two “Jacks”) working together. One would hold a longer drill bit and the other would use a sledgehammer to strike the bit. Although this required two men instead of one, it resulted in cutting into more rock faster.

Example of single jacking
Example of single jacking
Example of double-jacking
Example of double-jacking

The purpose of both single and double jacking was to drill holes into the rock. Once the holes were deep enough, they were loaded with blasting powder, fused, and lighted. The miners would then exit the mine quickly to safety. Often, this would signal the end of a miners’ shift. After the dust settled, the next shift of miners would go in and do the job of “mucking”. This process would remove the broken rock, known as muck, created as a result of the blast. This loosened rock would be transported out of the mine by both ore car through an adit or an ore bucket out of a vertical or inclined shaft.

As the rock was brought out to the surface, mining engineers would be constantly testing or assaying the rock for its silver content, as well as other valuable minerals that may exist. This told the engineers if they were either digging in the direction of the ore body described above or not. If they were, the single and double jackers were told to continue digging their course. If they weren’t, then they were instructed to dig in another direction.

Rock that did not contain silver ore was dumped near the mine entrance. These piles of discarded rock became the tell‑tale clue that a mine opening of some kind is nearby. They are often mistakenly called “tailings,” but the correct term is “waste piles”. Tailings are similar accumulations of leftover material, but they form at mills, where ore is crushed and processed—the next stop for any silver‑bearing rock.

Supporting & Supplying the Mines

Once mines were developed, different types of supplies were needed to support all the different trades involved in keeping the mines going. It was known that the people that provided those supplies and services made far more money than the miners themselves, including the mine’s owners.

Supplies included:

  • Mining tools such as shovels, picks, hammers, chisels, rope, and other assorted hardware
  • Blasting material, such as dynamite and black powder
  • Livestock such as mules and horses, plus supplies to support them such as tack and feed
  • Metal goods, such as ore cars and rails
  • Lumber for buildings, wagons, supporting mine shafts, rail ties, ore bins, etc.
  • Miners’ needs such as food, water, candles, etc.

Services included:

  • Teamsters for managing and handling livestock
  • Blacksmiths for forging all the metal hardware that was needed
  • Assayers for measuring the silver content or value of ore taken out of each mine
  • Living quarters and hotels
  • Cooks, bakers, farmers, and more…

All these supplies and services needed to be available in Silver Reef for the silver mining to thrive.

Mining Needed Timber

Underground mining usually consumes a lot of lumber, not only for cutting cord wood to power the steam engines and fire furnaces inside the mills, but also to shore up the mining tunnels to protect the miners from possible rock falls and collapses. To fulfill this need, trees from nearby forests needed to be harvested.

In the area around Silver Reef, a lot of trees have already been cut down by then for fuel and building materials. A large stand of trees grew on the west side of the Pine Valley Mountains. Some of them were already harvested to furnish lumber for the grand organ of the Morman Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. In 1880, the owners of the Barbee & Walker Mine recognized the need for a dependable source of good timber, so they secured government permission to cut trees on the west side of the mountains. The lumber had to be transported around the mountains to Silver Reef, adding more cost to the overall mining operation.

There was also a large forest of trees at the top of the Pine Valley Mountains, a mere seven “crow-fly” miles from Silver Reef. Cut timber from here could literally be dropped down a very steep incline to a newly constructed road up to what is now known as Oak Grove. From the end of the road, the lumber would only need to be transported by wagon for a short distance.

Road to Oak Grove - steep incline of the Pine Valleys in background
Road to Oak Grove – steep incline of the Pine Valleys in background

Sometime in 1880, an enterprising individual named Bob Rickard built a chute to carry logs from atop the Pine Valleys, several thousand feet down to Oak Grove. The chute dropped almost 4,000 feet in less than a mile. Rickard planned a grand celebration for everyone to come up and watch the first logs come down from the mountain above. Drinks were passed around a toast was made. Guests at this special event watched breathlessly as the first log came sliding down the chute at terrific speed and successfully made its precipitous journey to the bottom. However, the second and third log wasn’t as successful. The second log jumped out of the chute and damaged it. The third log damaged it more and a rapid destruction of the chute followed as more logs came down. In a cloud of wood splinters and dust, the entire chute was destroyed. Minutes after celebrating the opening, Rickard proclaimed another round of drinks to toast and celebrate the closing of his chute.

Milling the Silver

The story of silver mining continues with the milling process. A separate article explains how the mills around Silver Reef operated, along with details about its seven mills. See the Mills of Silver Reef.

There’s also a separate article about the Mines of Silver Reef that explains more of the mining process and shows the locations of most of the Silver Reef mines on an interactive map.

Silver Mining

Related Information

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Silver Reef: Then and Now

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This article is a collection of old and new photographs that can be compared by sliding a vertical bar back and forth. The pictures will give you a good idea of what was once here in Silver Reef during its boom years, and what it looks like today (2026).

Use your mouse to click and hold over the vertical bar, then slide back and forth to reveal different portions of the then and now picture.

Silver Reef: Then and Now

Wells Fargo Building (Front)

The Wells Fargo & Express Office building serves as Silver Reef’s museum. The historic picture was taken in 19?? when this building served as a residence?? Oh, and the horse’s name is Clown.

Silver Reef: Then and NowSilver Reef: Then and Now

Wells Fargo Building (Rear)

This the backside of the Wells Fargo & Express Office building. The historic picture was taken in 1968. You can see there was a rear deck, which was replaced with full-length rear deck you see today.

In the “now” picture of 2026, the Cassady Powder House, which is where the town’s dioramas reside, was built in the 1980s and was not part of the original building. You might think, is that the same tree? No, it isn’t.

Silver Reef: Then and NowSilver Reef: Then and Now

Main Street

These are two different views looking north up Main Street. The contemporary view was taken in 2026, whereas the historic view was taken about 1881.

In the 1881 scene, you can see the Wells Fargo and Harrison House buildings on the left side of Main Street. However, this is before the fire of 18??, which is when the Harrison House burned and was rebuilt of rock. The rock walls remain and are visible just beyond the Cosmopolitan.  

Silver Reef: Then and NowSilver Reef: Then and Now

View of Silver Reef

These are two different views looking down onto the town along Main Street. The scene is from atop Tecumseh Hill looking to the northwest.

Silver Reef: Then and NowSilver Reef: Then and Now

Savage Mine

Before and after view of the Savage Mine on the west side of Tecumseh Hill. The mine sat up on a small rise where wagons would load up ore that was lifted up from the hoisting works and then transported to one of the nearby mills of  Silver Reef. The Salvage Mine used a steam engine to lift buckets of ore through a vertical shaft from the various mining levels some 200-300 feet below.

Silver Reef: Then and NowSilver Reef: Then and Now
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History of Silver Reef

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The history of Silver Reef is both similar to other mining boomtowns of the American West and unique with its surrounding culture and the geologically unusual place where the silver was found. When miners arrived around 1875, the area was already home to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as Mormons. Unlike other mines where precious metals were found in quartz or other common rock, the silver here was found in sandstone, causing confusion for seasoned miners and leading to different mining practices.

History of Silver Reef

This article provides an overview of the history of Silver Reef – from when settlers first arrived in the area around 1858 until the 1950s when uranium was mined, to present day restoration and preservation efforts. The article is no replacement for books containing more detailed history, such as Silver, Sinners and Saints, which is showcased at the end of this article. By no means is this article a replacement for a visit and tour of the real thing – Silver Reef.

In This Article

Timeline

A detailed historic timeline is in a separate Historic Timeline of Silver Reef article. Below is brief timeline of Silver Reef’s history.

  • Dec 1861

    St. George Founded

    St. George, Utah, is founded as a result of the “cotton mission”

  • Nov 1866

    Silver is Discovered

    John Kemple discovers silver near Harrisburg

  • Mar 1875

    Mining Begins in Silver Reef

    Prospectors and miners begin establishing mining claims

  • 1876 – 1882

    Silver Reef's Boom Years

    There are good times in Silver Reef for seven years, longer than the average mining boomtown.

  • 1888

    Most Mines & Mills By Now Have Closed

    The largest mill in Silver Reef stops operating the previous year and another significant mill closes in 1888.

  • 1903

    Silver Reef's Buildings Disappear

    Many of Silver Reef’s abandoned buildings are dismantled and moved elsewhere.

  • 1986

    Wells Fargo Building Restored

    Restoration of the Wells Fargo Express building is complete and the Silver Reef museum opens.

  • 2013

    Silver Reef Non-profit, Inc.

    The Silver Reef Foundation is formed. This Utah non-profit manages the museum today.

The Beginnings

The area around Silver Reef or what is now Washington and Iron Counties, was first explored by an expedition of Mormons from Salt Lake City led by Parley P. Pratt in 1850. Brigham Young, leader of that church, directed Pratt to explore these areas.

In the next two decades, Young would direct several “missions”, sending people to settle this area and begin taking advantage of its resources. This would include the Iron Mission of 1851 that began mining big deposits of iron west of Cedar City and the Cotton Mission of 1861 that would use the warmer climate of the St. George area.

First Settlements

The first settlement near Silver Reef occurred in 1858 when several Mormon families began farming lands north of the Virgin River. The town was named Toquerville after Chief Toquer who led a band of Pauite Indians living along Ash Creek and its confluence with the Virgin River.

Within the next four years, other nearby settlements were founded, including Washington City, Grafton, and St. George. Harrisburg, just south of Silver Reef, was settled in 1859 by a group of families, then was abandoned when most of the same families regrouped and settled again in 1862 after picking a more suitable area, then later moved to Leeds for better farming land. The settling of Harrisburg would become a key factor in the discovery of silver and the creation of Silver Reef.

Mormon Culture

Most of the residents of Washington County followed the guidelines established by the church. Decades earlier, Their leader, Brigham Young advised church members to avoid engaging in mining precious metals like silver and gold. He understood that communities that developed from mining profits often weren’t sustainable, frequently shifting from boom to bust. This wasn’t the kind of successful colonization of the West that Young envisioned.

So, with the exception of mining coal and iron, Young was not very supportive of his members prospecting for, and mining precious metals. He also wasn’t in favor of his members leaving for California or Nevada to try their luck in the gold and silver rushes happening there. Because of this, there wasn’t much prospecting done in Utah.

After moving to the Washington County area in the early 1860s, many of the Mormons settlers faced some tough challenges. Their crops often failed, the summers were very hot, and the water supply from the Virgin River was unreliable. Even when the crops did grow, there wasn’t a large market nearby to sell them. By 1870, things improved a bit when people realized there was a market in Pioche, Nevada, a growing silver town nearby. Still, many settlers decided to give up and returned to northern Utah.

But, by early 1876, as Silver Reef began to boom, the early settlers started to see some hope. As more miners and others showed up during the mining boom, there was a big demand for food and other goods, and the Mormons of Washington County were ready to supply all these new people. Suddenly there was an infusion of cash into their struggling economy.

As Silver Reef started to grow, the relationship between the newcomers (sometimes called “Gentiles”) and the local Mormons sometimes called “Saints “) was sometimes a little strained. Both groups were unfamiliar with each other’s cultures. While both groups worked together, the Gentiles often didn’t understand the Mormons’ lack of sympathy for miners or their lack of interest of mining valuable ore in general.

Looking back from a modern perspective, it seems clear that without the boom years of Silver Reef, the economic future of the Washington County settlements would have been in question. If those boom years hadn’t existed, Southern Utah’s growth would certainly have been stunted.

Silver is Discovered

John Kemple rode into Harrisburg in 1866, searching for a place to spend the winter after prospecting for valuable metals in Montana. While waiting out the cold months, he used his prospecting skills to explore the unique landscapes of what is now the Red Cliffs Conservation Area southwest of Silver Reef.

  See the separate article on John Kemple and his discovery of silver
  See article What is a Reef? that explains this important geologic feature

Shortly after arriving, Kemple found what he knew was silver and sent rock samples off to get assayed. It came back at over $17,000 per ton. That sounds like a lot, but it was a big job to round up a ton of that type of rock. Regardless, the rock showed a lot of promise.

A year later, he found the source of the ore – a sandstone layer pushed up by what’s now called the White Reef. Silver ore in sandstone was so unusual that it took quite a while to find believers. It was not until 1872 that Kemple and others organized the Harrisburg Mining District. He filed his first mining claim a little later. By now, word was getting out that there could be a silver bonanza in the hills above Harrisburg, Leeds and Toquerville.

John Kemple
John Kemple
The rock, known as "horn silver", that Kemple found silver in
The rock, known as “horn silver”, that Kemple found silver in

Miners Arrive

Now that the word was out, people from all over began arriving in the area to prospect for silver. Articles from newspapers and journals from across the Southwest published stories about the silver discovery, which caught National attention. More claims were filed. Investors from big cities sent agents to the area to see if it was really true that silver could be found in sandstone. Suddenly, Washington County began experiencing a big influx of people.

In 1875, one of those agents who arrived was William Tecumseh Barbee. He was sent by the wealthy Walker Brothers of Salt Lake City to investigate the Harrisburg Mining District. Barbee would become one of the more influential people that sparked the rush to Silver Reef.

Also in 1875, investors from San Francisco organized the Leeds Mining Company. Its mine was located on the White Reef less than a mile from where the Silver Reef museum stands today. It began operation in late 1876 and continued producing silver until numerous equipment failures caused it to shut down in 1882.

By 1878, two more large mills were built: the Christy, the Barbee & Walker and the Stormont, with the Christy funded by more investors from the San Francisco Bay Area. All this would bring more people to the Silver Reef area, greatly increasing the economy of Washington County, much to the delight of the original Mormon settlers. There was now a much larger marketplace for their goods and services. Before long, the two cultures, the Mormons and the miners, formed a symbiotic relationship where each helped each other.

Silver Reef is Founded

As in any new mining camp, as prospectors and miners arrived, they would set up camps, often called tent cities. Tents, dugouts or ramshackle huts to live in. These popped up from Harrisburg to Leeds along the creeks (for water) and the various reefs.

In early 1876, being the entrepreneurial opportunist that he was, William Tecumseh Barbee staked out a real estate development and called it Bonanza City. He had a few buildings erected, including an assay office, a boarding house, general store, blacksmith shop, and a few dwellings. He called it the new metropolis of Southern Utah.

But many miners couldn’t afford Barbee’s expensive lots, so they camped northwest of Bonanza City, closer to the reefs. While Bonanza City was on flat ground, their camp was on land littered with big rocks. So, they named their camp Rock-pile. Soon afterwards, a merchant who moved his business from Pioche to Rock-pile started calling it Silver Reef, and the name stuck.

Both the names Silver Reef and Bonanza City show up on a tract map created in November 1876 by Washington County surveyor John Macfarlane. Later on, Macfarlane, who was a devoted Mormon, played a part in a unique moment in Silver Reef’s history by helping a priest organize a Catholic High Mass at the St. George Mormon Tabernacle.

  See the article A Unique Union of Religions to learn more
Initial tract map outlaying all the lots of both Bonanza City and Silver Reef
Initial tract map outlaying all the lots of both Bonanza City and Silver Reef

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Pioche Stampede

Beginning in 1876, the prosperous silver mining town of Pioche, about 120 miles or 2-3 days of travel to the west in Nevada, was beginning to have problems. Although Pioche continued to be a successful mining town into the mid-1900s, for various reasons during this time, miners and businesspeople lost confidence in the Pioche mines and began looking elsewhere for the next boom.

Many of those people thought that next boom would be Silver Reef. There was news that the Leeds Mining Company of San Francisco was buying up land and establishing mines. They intended to have a stamp mill running in a few months. When the people of Pioche learned about this, they began leaving Pioche en masse. The aforementioned merchant that named Silver Reef became the agent for the San Francisco investors and began selling lots in Silver Reef at a more reasonable price than Barbee’s Bonanza City.

By October 1876, the famous Pioche Stampede was on. Along the mountainous roads between Pioche and Leeds, a steady flow of people headed east to Silver Reef. They came in carriages, buckboards, heavy wagons, and some on foot with push carts. The goal of the Stampede wasn’t for obtaining mining claims, it was to buy up prime business locations on Silver Reef’s Main Street. When it was over, approximately one-third of the population of Pioche had moved to Silver Reef.

High Times at Silver Reef

The boom years of Silver Reef were from 1876 until about 1883. By the end of 1882, Silver Reef’s Main Street was supposedly a mile long. Businesses included hotels, restaurants, markets/stores, drugstores, a lumber yard, and several saloons, including the Elk Horn across the street from the site of today’s museum.

Main Street of Silver Reef in the early 1880s
Main Street of Silver Reef in the early 1880s

The picture above shows Silver Reef from about 1879. The tract map of Silver Reef below, this one listing and pointing out all the businesses, was drawn, again by John Macfarlane, in 1879.

Tract map of downtown Silver Reef – captions point out common buildings
Tract map of downtown Silver Reef – captions point out common buildings

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See a larger copy of this map in a new tab. Then click image to zoom in.
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Newspapers

The first newspaper in town, the Silver Reef Echo published its first edition on February 24, 1877. This was its only issue. James N. Louder, a former correspondent for the Salt Lake Tribune, along with others, purchased the Echo and renamed it The Silver Reef Miner in August 1878. Louder would continue to be involved in Silver Reef, including being the Postmaster and purchasing a building across the street from today’s museum. He hung on until Silver Reef’s bust.

The Silver Reef Miner competed with a newspaper in St. George, The Union. It rarely reported on what was happening in Silver Reef. This gave The Silver Reef Miner opportunity to concentrate on the stories in Silver Reef, mainly mining. Although Silver Reef was the biggest economic boom to Washington County at the time, as discussed earlier about Brigham Young’s wishes to not promote mining, its residents followed suit by not generally being interested.

Thanks to the archives of The Silver Reef Miner, a lot of Silver Reef’s history has been preserved and is now available in several books at the museum’s book store.

How You Can Learn More

Many of the historical accounts of events which occurred in Silver Reef were obtained from the book Silver, Sinners and Saints, A History of Old Silver Reef, Utah. To learn more about the history behind Silver Reef, purchase your own copy of this book at the Silver Reef Museum gift shop.

History of Silver Reef

Establishments

A school in Silver Reef was planned in 1879 that would be part of the Leeds school district. At that time, it was determined that 75 children of school age resided in Silver Reef. Funded by public donations, a school house was completed in January 1881. After Silver Reef’s demise, the school building was cut in half and moved to Leeds and reassembled, where it remained a school until 1956. In the 1970s, this old building became the current Leeds town hall and still is as of 2026. The site of the school and its surrounding stone walls can be visited along the Silver Reef Walking Tour.

Along with a separate cemetery in Leeds primarily used by the Mormons, three cemeteries were established in Silver Reef. The Catholic and Protestant cemeteries still exist and can be visited today. Both are located about half a mile south of the museum. There is also a small cemetery in Harrisburg that can still be visited in the middle of the Harrisburg Estate neighborhood.

The third cemetery was created by the Chinese residents, but it no longer exists. After Silver Reef declined, some of the bodies were exhumed and sent to China, so that their homeland would be their final resting spot.

Catholic Cemetery
Catholic Cemetery
Protestant Cemetery
Protestant Cemetery
  See the article on Cemeteries to learn more

Chinatown

Just like in many mining towns of the American West, when news of the silver rush spread, people of Chinese descent started coming to Silver Reef around 1878. As was common in many Western mining towns, the Chinese community faced challenges in being accepted.

Chinatown was situated just south of downtown Silver Reef, close to the Christy Mill. The community chose their own unofficial mayor, Sam Wing. They established various businesses including retail stores, drugstores, meat shops, laundries, and a chair factory. There was also an opium den. Out of all the residents in Silver Reef, around 100 were Chinese.

Sam Wing – unofficial mayor of Silver Reef’s Chinatown

Like in other mining towns, a Chinese lottery was set up here as well. According to the local Silver Reef newspaper, it was running “full blast…month in and month out”. The stores in town that sold tickets for the Chinese lottery essentially acted as agents for the major lotteries based in San Francisco. The lottery had a fairly complex system behind it. Gambling was quite popular among the Chinese community.

Labor Strike

The labor disputes and resulting miner strikes, beginning in 1881 are regarded as the beginning of the end of Silver Reef’s prosperity. It started on February 1 when miners of the Buckeye Mine of the Stormont Company arrived at work, they were notified that their pay would be cut to $3.50 per day rather than the normal $4. Most miners refused to go to work.

After the morning’s announcement, the workers marched over to the Barbee & Walker Mine and were joined by Union workers there. They all proceeded back to the Buckeye Mine, where they stopped all operations and took possession of the mine. Supposedly, this was the start of the first organized labor strike in Utah. It resulted in 200 men remaining idle for three months.

The mining companies wouldn’t cave into the strikers, insisted that they couldn’t be profitable by paying wages of $4 per day. Only the Christy Company decided to pay their workers the $4 wage and ended up being the only mines and mill in operation during this time, which turned out helping them economically in the long run.

Soon, there were 300 striking miners. Since many of the miners didn’t have much money, they didn’t have any choice but to look for work elsewhere and moved to other distant mining towns. Many went to Tombstone, Arizona. This loss of miners greatly affected businesses in Silver Reef, with some closing up and moving out of town. It also negatively affected the local Mormons economically.

Finally, after many discussions and meetings, the Union voted in April to accept the $3.50 per day wage. Many Irish miners had already left and were replaced by Cornish miners. Some Mormons also started working in the mines. It took about five more months for the mines and related businesses to get back to normal. New miners moved in and businesses resumed, but the Silver Reef boom days were over.

Silver Prices Decline

In 1877, the average price of silver was $1.20 per ounce. By 1883, the price had dropped to $1.11. Naturally, this cut into mining company profits and the ability to stay in business. Often, the difference between booms and busts in mining was driven by the commodities market, as it still is today.

Furthermore, as the easy high-grade silver was extracted from most mines, miners had to dig deeper to extract ore that contained less silver. Naturally, this drove up the costs of operating both the mines and the mills. The deeper the mines went, the more underground water was encountered that had to be pumped out, further making mining more difficult and costly.

By 1885, the price of silver continued to slip and was at $1.06. Slowly, the mines began to close. Over the next 20-30 years the price of silver would rise, tempting a few optimists to try their luck with digging ore out of Silver Reef mines again. Not many succeeded.

As Silver Reef’s prosperity slowed down, many other businesses in Washington County experienced a similar decline. For about ten years, the Mormon pioneers did well by selling their goods to the people of Silver Reef. Once the boom years ended, they had to find new markets to offer their goods and services.

In the end, covering the years of 1877 until 1900, Silver Reef extracted approximately $8.6 million (in 1880s dollars – $261 million in 2026 dollars ) in silver. The graph below plots the dollar value of silver taken out from Silver Reef mines between those years. The vertical axis plots dollars in $100,000 increments (1 thru 12, meaning $100,000 thru $1.2 million), and the horizontal axis plots each individual year.

History of Silver Reef

Demographics

It’s important to realize that during these boom years, mainly 1877 through 1881, an average amount of 1,500 people resided in and nearby Silver Reef. The number doesn’t sound high, but other towns in Washington County only had populations in the hundreds. In fact, Silver Reef was the largest town in Washington County during some of those years. The population varied, where at some times the population could have exceeded 2,000, where at other times it may have been around 1,000. There were no exact or timely census records at the time. However, the museum does have records of people living in Silver Reef during these years.

In comparison, during the same period, Leeds had around 300 residents, Toquerville had less than 200, Harrisburg less than 80, and St. George had around 1,300. Silver Reef was the largest town in Washington County during these years.

The 1880 US Census provides the best population record for this time.  Based on it, the Silver Reef Museum has compiled biographies of many residents of the town. 

We have no exact record of how many businesses and other establishments were in Silver Reef during each of the boom years, but here is an approximate breakdown by type:

  • Silver Mines, 30 (approx.)
  • Silver Mills, 6 – 5 by 1877 – 4 by 1884
  • General Stores or Mercantiles, 5 – 10
  • Hardware Store, 2
  • Drugstore, 3
  • Butcher Shop, 2
  • Hotels or Boarding Houses, 3
  • Restaurants, 2
  • Saloons, 11
  • Stables, 1
  • Barber, 2
  • Boots & Shoes, 2
  • Dressmaker, 1
  • Tailor, 2
  • Watchmaker, 1
  • Churches, 1 – Catholic
  • School, 1
  • Post Office, 1
  • Newspapers, 1

The following is an architectural sketch of a possible restoration model of downtown Silver Reef, provided by the 5-M Company (explained in Revival Attempts below). It shows a close approximation and number of businesses in Silver Reef during its boom years. A single year of when this building layout existed is not known.

Rendering of building locations in Silver Reef – zoom in by opening image in new tab
Rendering of building locations in Silver Reef – zoom in by opening image in new tab

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Occupations

Below is a list of occupations that existed during the boom years in Silver Reef along with the number of employees working each occupation.

assayer – 6
attorney – 5
baker – 1
banker – 4
barber – 3
blacksmith – 17
bleacher – 1
boarder – 4
boarding housekeeper – 2
boiler maker – 1
bookkeeper – 5
bootblack – 1
brewer – 3
butcher – 8
carpenter – 14
Catholic priest – 2
charcoal burner – 1
civil engineer – 1
cook – 10
dentist – 1
Deputy Sheriff – 1
doctor – 4
dressmaker – 1
druggist – 2
dry goods merchant – 7
editor – 1
express agent – 2

farmer – 6
feed stable keeper – 1
furniture dealer – 2
grocer – 10
hardware merchant – 1
harness maker – 2
hatter – 1
housekeeper – 142
house painter – 2
house work – 3
ice cream peddler – 1
jeweler – 1
Justice of the Peace – 1
laborer – 14
laundry – 12
livery stable – 4
lumber merchant – 2
machinist – 3
millwright – 1
mine boss – 1
miners – 338
mining engineer – 14
mining recorder – 1
mining secretary – 2
musician – 1
night watchman – 1
nurse – 1

postmaster – 2
printer – 2
quartz mill worker – 10
restauranteur – 1
saddler – 1
saloon keeper – 15
saw mill worker – 1
servant – 21
shoemaker – 6
sign painter – 2
Sister of the Holy Cross – 1
Sister Superior – 1
stationers – 2
stock herder – 3
stock raiser – 1
stone mason – 5
store clerk – 13
tailor – 2
tanner – 1
teacher – 2
teamster – 23
telegraph operator – 1
tin smith – 4
waiter – 4
wagon master – 1
wood chopper – 6
wood hauler – 3

Buildings Disappear

By 1903, many of Silver Reef’s residents had moved away, leaving many buildings and properties abandoned. As other areas in Washington County continued to grow, the buildings at Silver Reef became sources for cheap building materials. Buildings made of lumber were either moved intact or dismantled.

Over a couple of years, many of the buildings in Silver Reef were dismantled and moved to where they could be used or turned into building materials. For example, as mentioned under High Times above, the school building was moved to nearby Leeds. After the Barbee & Walker Mill closed in 1908, even more buildings were available to plunder. Whatever wasn’t salvaged later withered away in the desert sun and the winds swept away the loose material. In the 1930s, the administrative buildings of the Leeds Civilian Conservation Camp (which can still be visited today) were constructed from blocks of sandstone “mined” from Silver Reef buildings.

Once while a lumber building was being taken down, someone discovered a stash of several thousand dollars in gold and silver hidden beneath the floors of one building. This discovery led to more people searching through the remaining buildings, hoping to find similar hidden treasures, which resulted in destroying more buildings.

Silver Reef after many buildings were removed
Silver Reef after many buildings were removed

Revival Attempts & Preservation

In 1916, all mining claims in Silver Reef were consolidated into one property and became the Silver Reef Consolidated Mining Company. But no new mining started. During this time, the owners used the Wells Fargo building as their private residence.

The “tailings” next to the mills, consisting of very fine leftover dirt, still contained unprocessed silver. The same was true with waste piles of rock left near the mines. The technologies used to extract silver from rock ore was not as efficient in 1880 as it was in 1920. All over the West, many miners began “reworking” mine and mill tailings as technologies to extract silver improved, coinciding with when the prices of silver and gold were high.

Furthermore, many people knew that there was still a lot of silver left to be mined below the reefs. One company, the American Smelting and Refining Company, realized this fact and, in the late 1920s, acquired the Silver Reef Consolidated Mining Company properties.

A deep vertical shaft on top of the White Reef was sunk and then a few (horizontal) drifts were dug in hopes of accessing ore deep beneath the two reefs. A large metal headframe was built ready to begin extracting ore. Unfortunately, in 1929, the stock market crashed and the price of silver sank to its lowest level in decades. As a result, the company ceased operation. No large attempt to mine silver was made after that.

  See the Silver Mining article to learn more about mining terminology

Today, it’s very large vertical shaft can still be visited using the old road that goes from Silver Reef to the Leeds Mine crossing the White Reef. Although the headframe fell down in 1948, the foundation of the hoisting works remain.

Uranium Mining

In 1948, a new company on the scene, Western Gold & Uranium, Inc., acquired the consolidated properties. They begin reworking the tailings and waste piles. Although they were profitable in doing so, the company had more profitable operations elsewhere and concentrated on them.

When the uranium boom of the 1950s began, Western Gold & Uranium began assaying ore from all of its mines around Silver Reef for uranium. A mine was built on Paulmar Hill, which is part of Leeds Reef, called the Anne’s Pride Mine. This is the mine and headframe seen on the left side of the main road when heading up to Silver Reef today. Several thousand tons of silver and uranium ore were brought up from these underground workings.

Anne’s Pride Mine
Anne’s Pride Mine

In 1956, Western Gold & Uranium built a flotation mill just across the draw from the Barbee & Walker site. The mill is still standing and can be seen on the walking tour. It produced silver-copper concentrates, along with uranium-vanadium-copper concentrates. These concentrates were then sent to other mills to extract the pure metals, like silver and the highly sought-after uranium.

Unfortunately, the demand for uranium soon fell dramatically. By the end of 1959, Western Gold & Uranium ceased both their mining and milling operations.

  See the Uranium Mining article

The next ray of hope of reviving Silver Reef was the 5-M Company. They still own several of the old mining properties to this day in 2026. The owner, Frank Hartley, was related to a miner that worked the Silver Reef mines of the 1880s. In fact, it was his grandfather that made one of the last mill runs at the Barbee & Walker Mill in 1908.

Hartley’s intent was to rework the tailings with even better technology that came along in the 1950s. In 1979, 5-M built a leach pad operation to process the old, discarded ores. Construction of this new mill was in response to the very high price of silver at that time. Today, the remains of this operation can still be seen as the large concrete foundation just west of Tecumseh Hill.

A separate milling operation using cyanide leaching was built to rework the tailings of the Christy Mill. During this mill’s operation, these tailings stretched into the site of Bonanza City. Although recovery of silver was successful, it wasn’t profitable. Unfortunately, Washington County was left with the cost of cleaning up the cyanide-laced debris of the operation around 2005.

Even after several attempts to either establish any new mine or rework any of the tailings, nobody was successful and no operation lasted more than a year.

Silver Reef Estates

By the late 1970s and in the 1980s, home developers eyed the land around Silver Reef. With its great views and rustic charm, they envisioned a subdivision of high-end homes.

By 1988, many of the legal roadblocks were fixed and a neighborhood with streets were built. Eventually, 45 lots were created, sold quickly and many homes were built. Much of the neighborhood sat just north of old downtown Silver Reef. The result is that, unlike most other “ghost towns” of the American West, Silver Reef is one of the few that sits next to a residential area. This has helped it avoid the fate of many ghost towns which have been looted and destroyed over the years by vandals. It is also significant that at this time, in exchange for building roads in this residential area, Washington County was deeded several acres of the old downtown, what is now the Silver Reef Museum site.

The Silver Reef neighborhood as of 2026 – old Main Street with museum in center of picture
The Silver Reef neighborhood as of 2026 – old Main Street with museum in center of picture

Silver Reef Preservation

As the residential neighborhood was being established, the Wells Fargo Express building was in disrepair. At this time, it was 108 years old and was sitting empty and showing its age.

The first preservation effort took root in 1985. Behind the energetic work of Joy Henderlider, the Wells Fargo Silver Reef Monument (WFSRM) Committee was organized with big plans for reviving the old town. Its first priority was to restore the Wells Fargo building. They approached the task with lots of volunteer labor and grants from the State of Utah and donations from private individuals.

One important person involved in the project was Western sculptor Jerry Anderson. After the restoration was completed in 1986, the building became home to a museum featuring Silver Reef artifacts on one side and Anderson’s art gallery on the other. Along with others, Anderson is recognized for maintaining the building in excellent condition. In 2026, he moved his gallery to his private residence across, and a little up the street from the museum.

In addition to restoring the Wells Fargo Building, the WFSRM committee also rebuilt two structures on their original sites: the Cosmopolitan Restaurant and the Rice Bank. The Cosmopolitan Restaurant was finished in 1992 and leased to a restaurateur, but unfortunately, it closed after a few years. After several attempts to find a reliable tenant to generate income, the loan for the building’s construction went into default. In 2010, Washington County bought much of the surrounding property for historical preservation.

The WFSRM was unable to carry on their vigorous work and by 2013, the museum was only open one day a week and facing some challenges. A new group of local residents got organized to try something different. In 2013, the non-profit Silver Reef Foundation was formed to collaborate with Washington County on a more comprehensive effort to preserve Silver Reef’s artifacts, buildings and history.

As of 2026, many of the original members who helped start the Silver Reef Foundation are still actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the museum and its grounds. The Foundation has a 100-year lease agreement with the County to use the property.

History of Silver Reef

How You Can Learn More

Many of the historical accounts of events which occurred in Silver Reef were obtained from the book Silver, Sinners and Saints, A History of Old Silver Reef, Utah. To learn more about the history behind Silver Reef, purchase your own copy of this book at the Silver Reef Museum gift shop.

History of Silver Reef

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