| What makes it historical? |
A prospector named John Kemple was the first to find silver here in 1866 and staked some claims that he never really developed. Who was going to devote resources to mining sandstone for silver? It just wasn’t done!
Until it was. The Walker brothers in Salt Lake City, whose bank tower lights still change color with the weather, hired William T. Barbee to stake 21 mining claims in the area that Mr. Kemple had casually prospected. Mr. Barbee started a town called Bonanza City, which quickly became too expensive for miners to live in, so they started their own tent city called Rockpile, later Silver Reef! At its height, between 1878 and 1882, there were over 2,500 people living here. Silver Reef even had its own Chinatown! When the world silver market crashed in 1884, so did this mine. By the time all was said and done, it had produced $25 million worth of silver ore from a most unusual strata! |
