Gold was discovered in a creek called Sweetwater about 1842 and the settlement of South Pass City came into being. Indian raids by the Sioux or Cheyenne were frequent and killed many of the settlers. The raids were sparked by their drinking water being poisoned by the miners as well as their food supply being killed by the settlers. Despite these difficulties, the town continued to grow and in 1870 had a population of 4,000 and became the county seat of Carter County. Not too many years later, the population began to diminish as people moved away to find their future elswhere. Interesting sites still remain along the main street of Riverside.
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.
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.
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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