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The Leeds area, on the western edge of the Colorado Plateau, has experienced many boom and bust cycles in the past 200 million years. Thanks to the uplift of the Colorado Plateau roughly 20 million years ago much of the area’s ancient story can be determined from the exposed rock layers. Though the oldest layer near Leeds, the Kaibab Limestone, dates back to roughly 260 million years ago, we’ll start our story with the dinosaurs roughly 198 million years ago.

Way back in the early Jurassic period much of what is now southwestern Utah was submerged under shallow Lake Dixie. Preserved in the Moenave Formation exposed at Quail Creek Lake, Red Cliffs Recreation Area, and near St. George are footprints and impressions made by dinosaurs and other creatures as they wandered along the muddy lake shore. The abundance and diversity of these fossilized prints are continuing to surprise paleontologists as they sift through the rock layers. Boom!

Unfortunately, the environment changed dramatically. Within a few million years the area dried out considerably and as the lake shrank and then disappeared the critters were forced to either move on or die. For the next 60 million years the area’s environment resembled that of the Sahara Desert with windblown sand dunes reaching astounding heights of 3,000’. Bust!

Zooming ahead to more recent times we’ll pick up the story with evidence left behind by Paleo-Indians. The nomadic peoples followed Pleistocene megafauna across the Bering Land Bridge and then dispersed throughout North America down to South America. The first evidence of them found in southern Utah—stone tools—has been dated to about 13,000 years ago. Then, as now, humans stuck to the valleys, where water and wildlife were abundant. These first people relied primarily on large mammals such as mammoths and mastodons. Boom! By the end of the last Ice Age (roughly 10,000 years ago) as most of the megafauna died out and the climate warmed, the Clovis people had to adapt to a new lifestyle. Bust!

The descendants of the Paleo-Indians lived more of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, subsisting primarily on plant matter with wild game supplementing their diet. This lifeway continued for close to 7,000 years when the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) culture emerged. The Ancestral Puebloans survived and even thrived in the mild and moderately wet climate—tending large agricultural fields and building extensive canal systems and increasingly larger villages. Boom! Again though, the climate changed, this time dramatically so. Starting after shortly 1150AD North America entered a 300-year-long dry period often referred to as the Great Drought. Ancestral Puebloan peoples all throughout the southwest abandoned their large complexes and scattered in small groups across the landscape. Bust!

Within a hundred years or so of the dispersal of the Ancestral Puebloans new groups, known collectively as Utes, took over most of Utah. Living in small, nomadic groups Utes roamed freely for close to 500 years. Boom! This time major change came in the form of white settlers. By 1846 the first Mormon pioneers had settled near the shore of Great Salt Lake and within a few years they established small towns throughout the region. At first the groups coexisted peacefully but after rich ore deposits were discovered, and thousands of people came streaming into the area, violence erupted. Soon the various Ute tribal groups were relegated to reservations. Bust!

In 1861 a group of Mormons settled at the confluence of Quail and Leeds Creeks. Their small town, Harrisburg, thrived; the residents planted crops on land irrigated by diverting water from the two creeks. Boom! Flooding, followed by a shortage of water (ah, the irony), led to the community being abandoned in favor of higher ground. Bust! Their new town, Leeds (originally called Bennington), remains an agricultural oasis in the Mojave Desert.

Which is where we enter the story. Enticed to the area by its proximity to Zion National Park we were pleasantly surprised to find so much else to explore. There seems to be no shortage of fun things to do in Utah—the state has five National Parks: Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and the above-mentioned Zion as well as seven National Monuments: Cedar Breaks, Dinosaur, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Hovenweep, Natural Bridges, Rainbow Bridge, and Timpanogos Cave and one National Historic Site: Golden Spike. It should come as no surprise, then, that Utah’s number one industry is tourism.

Our days were filled with work but by the time our evening break rolled around the sun was still shining and so we went exploring. Our first stop was a few miles south at Quail Creek Lake State Park. The man-made lake was dammed in 1985 to provide water for irrigation and household use for the growing population near St. George. Boom! The most striking thing about the reservoir is the geology—the lake is cupped by the remains of the Virgin Anticline. The easiest way for me to describe it is to steal an analogy I recently came across: Take a hard cover book, open it to the middle and lay it flat on a table, pages down, spine up. The flattened book represents the stratigraphy of the region’s layers. Next, place both hands on the table on either side of the book and apply inward pressure—the spine should rise into the air. The A-shaped book now represents the upwarping of the rock layers. The next step I just want you to envision, not actually do (we desire that no harm shall come to any book)—imagine cutting away the spine and one inch on either side of the spine. What remains are two steeply angled layers pointing at each other across empty space.

In the void between the layers is where the lake now lies. In order to create the reservoir two dams were built, the smaller one was made out of concrete while the main dam was created out of earth fill. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I personally would not have piled a bunch of dirt on top of a water-soluble rock layer and expected it to hold. As you might guess, the main dam failed—in 1989 during the early morning hours the water of Quail Creek Lake washed in the New Year. No lives were lost but the flooding waters destroyed roads and bridges causing millions of dollars of damage. Bust! See, it can be crucial to understand the composition of rock layers.

Of course, just across the way, to the northwest of the lake is a site that proves the complete opposite to be true—Silver Reef. In 1866 John Kemple discovered a small hunk of silver among a rock outcropping about three miles north of Leeds. Kemple examined the surrounding rock and determined it was sandstone, which he knew was never mineral rich. So he headed to Nevada where the geology was “right” for mining. By 1875 other people had found silver in the sandstone and ignoring all the basics of geology they established claims in the whitish sandstone. Poor Kemple, his knowledge of geology certainly cost him.

In just a few short years a town with 2,000 inhabitants sprung up near the mines, replete with over 100 businesses including hotels, nine grocery stores, a bank, six saloons, five restaurants, and a hospital. During the good years the mines were extracting over a million dollars of silver ore a year from the sandstone! Boom! In keeping with the area’s trend, the boom was short lived—by 1881 the price of silver had dropped and the mines closed down. Bust! The hardworking and at times quite rowdy population was forced to move on. These days there is little left of Silver Reef: the restored Rice Bank, the sturdy Wells Fargo building, a smattering of ruins and two cemeteries (one Catholic and one Protestant).

Silver Reef is far from dead, however, the land in the foothills of the Pine Mountains has become a desirable residential area. Boom! As we walked among the ruins along the crest of the sandstone layer we marveled at its significance—it is the only place in the world where silver was mined from sandstone. Silver Reef’s story is still being written as there is a large mining company that owns a few claims in the area that, on paper, are viable. In the late 1990s Silver Standard test drilled to determine the extent of a silver ledge, though on our visit we did not see any active mining.

South across the valley from Silver Reef is the strikingly-colored layer that gives Red Cliffs Recreation Area its name. The recreation area is a small part of the larger Red Cliff Reserve which was set aside in 1996 to protect 62,000 acres from development. Often described as a transition zone, the protected lands lie in a broad low-lying valley where the western edge of the Colorado Plateau collides with the eastern edge of the Mojave Desert and the southern toe of the Great Basin. As you might imagine there is a wide diversity of life in this mixing of habitats—most of them sustained by the seasonal streams that meander through the Reserve fed by runoff from the Pine Valley Mountains to the north and west.

Getting to the Recreation Area was half the fun. From Leeds we drove south to the remains of Harrisburg. Roughly 100 years after Harrisburg was abandoned for higher ground an RV club bought much of the old town and opened an RV resort. In an odd jumble of old and new some of the stone-walled houses stand surrounded by shiny, modern homes-on-wheels. From what we gathered, the houses are technically a part of the Recreation Area and can’t be torn down.

From Harrisburg we turned west and drove through two narrow underpasses that were spanned by I-15 north and southbound. Once out from under the interstate we could see more stone foundations and rock walls that were once part of the thriving little community of Harrisburg. I wonder how many houses were destroyed when they built the road since it passes right through the center of the town. Of all the houses, the Adams house—which was occupied until 1944—was in the best shape. From what we read the house was undergoing renovation and would at some point in the future be open to the public.

During our late afternoon visit the red cliffs were already blocking the sun in the campground. While there are arches, narrow canyons, hidden pools, and dinosaur footprints to discover we just didn’t have the time. Instead, we hiked a couple of the shorter trails. The first one took us across red rock to an overlook of the white Silver Reef sandstone, and the second took us to an Ancestral Puebloan ruin across the bubbling creek on top of a nearby hillside. From their hilltop home the residents of this ancient village could see for miles across the landscape. It was an ideal area for the native people since the weather was mild throughout most of the year.

In fact, the mild winters are still drawing people to the area; St. George, Washington, La Verkin, and Hurricane (which is pronounced HER-uh-kin by the locals) are growing rapidly as the area has become a popular place with retirees. Boom! We actually had a bit of trouble finding a place to stay for our second week in the area since it was during the Huntsman World Senior Games, “the premier senior athletic event in the world.” Alas, we were too young to participate but maybe we’ll give it a try in a couple decades.

Leaving Red Cliffs we realized we were driving on a road built by men who were working for the Civilian Conservation Corps housed in Leeds. Some of the men who worked out of Leeds also helped construct the famous Zion Park Tunnel and other infrastructure at that National Park. The Leeds CCC camp was built in 1933, just months after President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the creation of the New Deal program in one of his fireside chats.

First, we are giving opportunity of employment to one-quarter of a million of the unemployed, especially the young men who have dependents, to go into the forestry and flood prevention work… In creating this civilian conservation corps we are killing two birds with one stone. We are clearly enhancing the value of our natural resources and second, we are relieving an appreciable amount of actual distress.

The Leeds camp housed about 250 young men at a time, most of whom were primarily from eastern states; what a shock the desert scenery must have been to them! The “CCC Boys” worked on projects all over southwestern Utah ranging from flood control and road construction to building picnic tables, benches, and restrooms. Boom! Of the many buildings once in use at the Leeds camp only a few of the stone ones remain. After Congress cut off funding for the program in 1942 in response to the rising demands of WWII the Leeds camp shut down and many of the wood-framed buildings were removed. Bust! Admirably the tiny Leeds Historical Society is maintaining what remains of the property (which is said to be the best preserved CCC camp in the country) with hopes for restoration (if they ever get the money).

We will leave the arguments of whether New Deal programs helped or actually hurt our country during the Great Depression to the historians and economists but from our perspective we think the CCC was the best of Roosevelt’s programs. Every state we have visited thus far in our travels has public infrastructure (including recreation areas) that was built or enhanced by the CCC. When we think of all the places that need improving—and the country’s current economic state—we wish the CCC was still around.

Currently, the place is quite ideal with its mild weather, historic sites, recreation areas, and natural points of interest. Though, assuredly, the cycles of boom and bust are far from over for the Leeds’ area.

Photos: View our photographs from Southwestern Utah.

Dates: We stayed in Leeds, Utah from 09/28/08 to 10/12/08.