Silver Reef is not the important ghost town it once was. It has been absorbed into a suburban setting and has lost the abandoned look it had when I first saw it decades ago. It is nevertheless included in this book for two reasons: It was a vital, historic mining center in southern Utah, and it is close enough to wonderful Grafton (see following entry, pages 244–249) that you might as well take a look while you’re in the area.
Silver Reef stands as a testament that not all common knowledge is correct. Virtually all prospectors, mining experts, assayers, and metallurgists once knew that sandstone simply does not contain silver. However, prospector John Kemple proved in 1866 that the common knowledge was wrong. In a white sandstone reef south of what is now Silver Reef, he found a significant amount of silver. He nevertheless went off to Nevada, but he returned to Utah in 1870 and developed the Harrisburg Mining District.
Another prospector, William Tecumseh Barbee, also discovered silver in sandstone in 1874. Grubstaked by two Salt Lake City banking brothers, Barbee founded the Tecumseh Mine and other claims. The brothers, believing the “experts” who proclaimed sandstone’s inability to hold silver, backed out of the investment but allowed Barbee to keep the claims. His subsequent strike gave rise to Bonanza City. Land was expensive in the new town, so newcomers set up a tent city nearby and called it the Rockpile. When a rush to the area ensued, the Rockpile became Silver Reef, which soon absorbed Bonanza City.
Silver Reef, which eventually had a population between fifteen hundred and two thousand, featured such enterprises as saloons, mercantiles, drugstores, gambling houses, a bank, and a Wells Fargo Express Company office. It also could boast of such civic refinements as a Catholic church with a small hospital in its basement, fraternal lodges, a school, and a racetrack. Because it was a silver mining town, Silver Reef was largely non-Mormon, although citizens purchased Mormon goods and many of the town’s buildings were erected using Latter-day Saint labor. The fact that the town’s racetrack was the center of the action on Sunday proves that Silver Reef was not under Latter-day Saint restrictions.
The glory years of Silver Reef lasted only from 1878 until 1882. The price of silver dropped by almost half in 1881 at the same time that area mines began to give out and to flood. By 1884, the town was emptying, and the major mines and mills ceased production by 1891. Although some mining continued on a small scale, Silver Reef was essentially dead, but not before producing twenty-five million dollars in ore.
The stout Wells Fargo office in Silver Reef is reminiscent of similar buildings in California’s Gold Rush Country.
WALKING AND DRIVING AROUND SILVER REEF
The parking area for Silver Reef is adjacent to its most prominent building, the 1878 Wells Fargo office, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was restored in 1991 and now serves as a combination art gallery and history museum. The gallery features Western art, and the museum offers historical photographs, arrowheads, pottery shards, miners’ tools, and other artifacts.
Across the street to the south is the 1876 former John Rice bank, now a private residence. North of the gallery/museum is a reconstruction of the Cosmopolitan Restaurant and several walls of former Silver Reef businesses. Beyond the town-site to the north is the rather surreal sight of suburban homes winding up a hill. Behind the town to the west is considerable evidence of Silver Reef’s mining past: a wooden hopper, mining debris, and the stone retaining walls and foundations of the Barbee and Walker Mill.
Silver Reef’s two cemeteries, Protestant and Catholic, are back toward the interstate. Retrace your route one mile from the Wells Fargo building, where a sign will direct you to the cemeteries immediately ahead. You’ll also notice a mine’s headframe on the hill southeast of the graveyards.
WHEN YOU GO
From Cove Fort, drive 111 miles south on Interstate 15 to the Leeds North Exit, Exit 23. Silver Reef is 1.4 miles west of that exit. Prominent signs lead you to the townsite.