| Silver
Reef is located about 18 miles northeast of St. George, Utah just
off Highway 15. It was once a silver mining boom town. John Kemple
discovered silver here in the spring of 1866. He was never able
to find the source of the silver vein however, and he moved to Nevada.
In 1874 he returned and established the Harrisburg Minimg District.
The picture to the right is of the building that was the Wells Fargo
Station during the town's boom days. Kemple located many claims
but never developed them. By 1875 there were many prospectors in
the area. |
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The
news of silver ore being found in the sandstone caught the attention
of two bankers, the Walker brothers, from Salt Lake City. They provided
the grubstake for a well known prospector, William T. Barbee. Late
in 1875 there were 21 claims staked where the potential for mining
silver was rich. Barbee quickly set up a town and called it Bonanza
City. There wasn't much to Bonanza City, but the property values
were high anyway. Most of the miners couldn't afford property there
so they set up a tent city in a rocky section of land and named
it "Rockpile". It was aptly named because at that time
a rock pile with tents is exactly what it was. There was a small
cluster of businesses in Bonanza City. |
| Mines
closed in Pioche, Nevada in November of 1875, and many of the miners
and business owners came to this area. They changed the name of
the "Rockpile" to Silver Reef. Almost instantly, there
were 9 grocery stores, 6 saloons, a newspaper, and 5 restaurants.
I find it interesting that the grocery stores outnumbered the saloons.
There is still a restaurant in Silver Reef, called the Cosmopolitan.
You see it pictured to the right. It is open only Wednesday to Saturday
however. It didn't happen to be any of those days when we were there
so we never saw the inside. |
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Pictured
left is one of the old ruins still standing in Silver Reef. It's
a bit hard to tell exactly what it was, but from it's location,
it may have been one of the businessmen's home. Some Chinese laborers
who had been working on the railroad, found Silver Reef and set
up their own Chinatown. From 1878 to 1882, Silver Reef's population
reached over 1,500. Six miles were being actively mined, and over
a million dollars came from those mines every year. People lived
the highlife in Silver Reef until around late 1881 when several
factors caused the economy to take a downward slide. It went the
way of many of the old boomtowns. |
| Three
things contributed to the demise of Silver Reef. The world silver
market dropped, the mines were filling with water faster than it
could be pumped, and the mine stockholders lowered wages until the
miners couldn't afford to stay. The majority of the mines had completely
closed by 1884. Several people attempted to revive the town in 1898,
1909, 1916, and 1950, but no one was successful at this venture.
Today, there are still parts of Silver Reef standing like those
in the picture to the right and a few modern houses have been constructed.
One of those belongs to Jerry Anderson, whose beautiful bronze sculpture
and painting is displayed in the Wells Fargo building pictured above. |
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CLICK
HERE TO SEE JERRY ANDERSON'S SCULPTURE
|
