Silver Reef Utah

The name says it all, it was an area with a large collection of silver ore that was mined in the early 1800's.  If you visit today you will see beautiful scenery but a very sleepy town with many retirement homes.  This was not the case in the 1800's, the town was booming with 5 grocery stores, many hotels, a saloon and everything else you could imagine at that time.  If you do any research on the area you find out that it was the only place in the world where they found silver in sand stone as well as petrified wood. In fact one of the petrified wood pieces that was found in the area was sent to the Smithsonian who said it was a good fake, because they had never seen anything like it before. I have seen many estimates on the amount of money they made from the mining but the latest one I read was 25million dollars, which is a lot of money now but back in the early 1800's is an unthinkable amount.  If you are driving through the sleepy town on Interstate 15 and about 15 miles north of St.George, I would highly recommend you stop and explore the area. If you go to the north end of town and head west under the freeway you will find a museum and many of the ruins still remaining.  If you have enough time to spend here I would also recommend driving and walking along the white cliffs to see how many mines you can find. In the few times I have searched I have seen probably 40 mines.  I had also heard that the miners ran into a cave underground and it was all petrified trees crossing through laced with silver and would have possibly been another wonder of the world but it was destroyed by the miners searching for silver. Although you are not supposed to collect rocks in the historic area it is worth the time you spend there. All of the mines are closed so you can't get in, but many of them are covered by welded re-bar allowing you to look in or even stand on top of the deep pit mines.  If you are in the mood for rock hounding you can head east of town and search for some white petrified wood.  I has been very well picked over and chances are you will only find a few small pieces but its still fun ti search for.  The pieces are found mostly at the bottom of the wash.  When I went I only found 2 very small pieces but is made the trip like an Easter egg hunt.