Volborthite

specimen number:
1052760

location:
Silver Reef, Washington Co., Utah, USA

description:

Yellow green platy crystals of volborthite across the front of matrix. Good rich example for the species for this locality. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video. This label gives an acquisition date of 1908.

The Silver Reef mining district, situated in Washington County, Utah, was a highly unusual and historically significant underground silver mining operation. Geologically, the deposit remains famous as one of the very few places in the world where commercial quantities of silver were found hosted entirely within sandstone, specifically the Silver Reef Sandstone member of the Triassic-age Chinle Formation. Hydrothermal fluids or low-temperature groundwater circulating through the ancient sedimentary strata precipitated silver chloride, known as chlorargyrite or horn silver, along with secondary copper and uranium minerals, often selectively replacing petrified wood, fossilized plants, and organic debris embedded within the cross-bedded sandstone layers. Historically, the presence of silver in the region was discovered in 1866, but large-scale industrial underground mining and localized open-cut quarrying did not boom until 1875 when a massive rush led to the rapid establishment of the bustling town of Silver Reef. The district experienced its peak operational window between 1876 and 1888, utilizing numerous mills to process millions of dollars in silver bullion, but a combination of falling global silver prices, escalating underground pumping costs, and a series of bitter labor strikes forced the closure of the major corporate mines in 1891. Sporadic, small-scale leasing operations and secondary mining re-evaluation continued into the early twentieth century, but all commercial extractions permanently ceased by the mid-1900s, leaving the historic ruins preserved as a ghost town and open-air museum through 2026.

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