Silver Reef
"It is a proven legal fact, Silver ain’t got no business being in sandstone!
But there it was, tons of silver ore in sandstone, completely ignorant of the law." - Dave Crosby

The silver in the Sandstone Member of the Chinle Formation was discovered in 1866 by John Kemple, but of course no one believed him.
In 1874 he was finally able to set up the Harrisburg Mining District and over a thousand people moved in.
They removed more than $7.5 million dollars worth of the stuff that couldn’t possibly be there.

By 1884-5 it was a ghost town.

Homer Whitlock, an old miner friend, told me that they dug into a huge chamber in Silver Reef filled with large trees that had been completely replaced with silver. He gave the specimen on the left to my Aunt Eve. What a lost treasure for future museum investigators! Alas, they were all crushed and smelted and converted into coins, belt buckles, and photograph paper.
To this day, no one has ever found silver in sandstone anywhere else in the United States.

Do a web search on Silver Reef, or better yet, get on I-15 and head south toward St George. Take the Leeds Exit about 15 miles before you get to Washington and follow the road northwest. The signs will direct you to turn left, then right to the Museum in the old Wells Fargo Building.

























Oh, I forgot to mention that you should sell your “T-Bills” and put all the cash in a back pack for this trip because you might want to purchase some of the outstanding art work displayed among the relics of days of yore.

















EDIT 2018/12/22 The True Silver Reef Story.

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 Harrisburg. 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.

The Silver Reef Story really began with Sgt Orson Bennett Adams (B. 9 March 1815 Alexander, Genessee County, New York - Death: 4 February 1901 Leeds, Washington County, Utah), Veteran of Mormon Battalion in 1846, Original settler in Parowan in 1851.

The Adams family was among the nine families "called" in 1861 by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to settle at the confluence of Leeds and Quail Creeks; the new settlement was named Harrisburg.
Orson selected the most western 200 acres on Quail Creek for his home. He later became the Mining Recorder for the area.

In 1866 John Kemple, an older and experienced prospector and assayer, took a room for the winter at the Harrisburg home of Orson Adams.
While wandering the hills west of town he noticed the green and blue copper stains in the rocks.
Assaying samples, he found valuable amounts of silver was present! He sent ore samples to other assayers for conformation.

H. H. Smith, of Shaunty, Beaver County said:
"Kemple must be crazy to ask me to assay a sand rock."

But it wasn't until two years after the arrival of William Tecumseh Barbee in July 1875 that the Silver Reef rush began.
Quote Proctor - 1953
"The original discovery of rich ore in place was made by Barbee who noted an outcrop of 300-400 ounce silver which had been gouged out by the wheels of Joe and_Alex McCleave's wood wagon on the east side of Tecumseh Hill."

Most of the silver chloride was found around petrified trees buried in sandstone!

Obviously something unusual happened here.

There are many theories about where the silver came from.

I think 150 million years ago a mostly silver asteroid traveling in a very low north-northeast direction plowed into what is now St. George area and came to an abrupt stop just northeast of little purgatory and vaporized along with an equal amount of Navajo sandstorm and salt. The vapor cloud hung over the area until it condensed and "rained" down on the crater area.

Actual rainwater dissolved the silver and salt and leached into the sandstone area, heaviest near the center, thinning on the periphery. The compressed trench later rebounded to become the "anticline."