Silver Reef Utah The town of a 1000 Fortune hunters.

Hello All

The "ghost town? of Silver Reef got its start when silver was discovered in the sandstone cliffs of the eastern slope of the Pine Valley Mountains. Silver in sandstone?? It was unbelievable and has spawned numerous tales of exactly how the ore was discovered.

 The most often told tale is when a prospector named John Kemple had been roaming the sandstone reefs in search of any metallic color back in 1866, he took shelter with a family in the Mormon settlement of Leeds.

 Welcoming the tired and chilled man into their home, they got the fire roaring to warm him up and as Kemple sat staring into the fire, he allegedly saw a small shining stream ooze from an overheated rock. The next day, he then began to search for the source of what he believed was silver. Though he did find a small sample, it wasn?t enough to keep him in the area and he soon moved on to Nevada.

 A later story tells of an assayer in the notorious mining town of Pioche, Nevada, just across the state line, who was infamous for his overstated ore values. Referred to by area prospectors as "Metalliferous? Murphy, two miners decided to pull a prank on him and submitted pieces of a broken grindstone for assay. When Murphy predictably reported the fragments contained silver to the value of 200 ounces per ton, the miners revolted, threatening to hang Murphy if he didn?t immediately leave town.

Murphy complied, but not before he tracked the source of the fragments of the grindstone back to the area that would soon be called Silver Reef. Murphy then headed to Utah in search of the "sandstone silver.? Though there is no record of the assayer ever filing a claim, he quickly drew the attention of other prospectors and silver was soon confirmed to be hidden within the sandstone rock formations, much to the surprise of many skeptical miners. It was the first and only time silver has been found in sandstone in North America.

 In 1874, John Kemple returned to the area and established the Harrisburg Mining District. Though he filed several claims, for unknown reasons he never developed them. Soon, word got out and the hills were crawling with a 1000 prospectors.  T

 Within no time, a town grew up boasting more than 100 businesses stretched out along a mile long main street, including nine  grocery stores, six saloons, a newspaper called the Silver Echo, eight dry goods stores, a bank, a Wells Fargo office, a hospital, hotels and boarding houses, and five restaurants.

 By 1879, the town was called home to some 2,000 people and included a horse race track, a brewery and a brass band. But, it was a bad year for the settlement, as a major fire swept through the town, the price of silver dropped, labor disputes erupted in the mines, and flooding occurred in many of the low level mine shafts.

However, Silver Reef endured, centered within a six mile area of active mines, from which came more than a million dollars in ore each year. But its demise was on its way. In late 1881, silver prices dropped world wide, the mines were filling with water at rate faster than the workers could pump it out, and mine owners began to lower wages.

Most miners could no longer afford to stay and began to move.  By 1884, most of the area mines had closed and Silver Reef was quickly becoming a ghost town. By 1890, less than 200 people remained in the area and the following year, the last mine shut down, though ore continued to be brought out of the area for the next decade. Over the years, Silver Reef produced about 25 million dollars worth of ore.

Not bad for some thing that normally shouldn't be there.

Hardluck 

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