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Show Silver Was Abundant In The Sandstone ; Today there is little left of the town which was once the largest in Washington County. The Wells Fargo Express Company Building of cut stone and the adobe house of John H. Rice remain unchanged, but everywhere else the desert has taken over. The land looks now much as it did before the Buckeye Reef, Bonanza Flat, Tecumseh Hill, and the thirty other mining claims were being operated. The reef, a white upthrust, runs in an undulating un-dulating line through the valley like the backbone back-bone of a gigantic fish lying a little on it side ; the deseret vegtation covers the ruins and scars, and except for a few skeletal walls, all traces of the busy life of Silver Reef have been wiped out Until 1900 the Reef remained a busy, bustling place with trains of burros hauling down wood, freight wagons and peddlers' wagons Tilling the streets, the daily stage hurring through. Guarded wagons pulled out loaded with silver bars, each of which weighed approximately twenty-five pounds , and were worth between $450 and $500. Each bar was encased in a leather bag strapped at the top and with handles for lifting and . carrying. Horse racing and wrestling, dancing, dan-cing, and drinking filled in the extra time of the miners. , One disastrous fire at the reef, the drop in the price of silver, and the fact that the ore veins had run out, caused a complete closedown close-down before 1908. Now the local settlers began to buy the buildings in order to get the lumber. In the foundation of one of these Albert Anderson found a cache of money, which was guessed to be anywhere from two to twenty thousand dollars. Now the work of razing the buildings proceeded at a greatly accelerated pace - until soon there were none left. Today the very names - Bonanza Flat, Tecumseh Hill, Buckeye Reef, and the others carry a strange and foreign sound as from a life and a world long past. They melt into the breeze along with the aroma of sage and fade into the distance along with the white of the reef. What is left of the old town of Silver Reef is located just outside of the city of Leeds of Interstate 15. ' |