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Dave, I now know that but back in the 70's I had yet to learn that. JYou18, I see that you are in Castledale, by any chance do you know Bret Rasmussion to your north in Huntington? He is a treasure/artifact hunter and knows a lot about the Swell area. I've been out with him in the past, he's really busy with his job right now, and he's a great guy. You should try to tie up with him and drag him out once in awhile. He sometimes posts here as Bret007, if you can find an old post you might leave him a PM. I'll send him an email and let him know to check here.

Sounds good to me. I don't know of any potash mines but I do know where there are great concentrations of gypsum (CaSO4-2H2O). One spot is about 30-40' in diameter and height and is solid gypsum crystal plates, some so clear you can easily see thru them without distortion. It's like looking through a 1/2" piece of clear glass. Another location nearby also has the perfectly clear plates but it is not as large. The areas of the Swell that I am familiar with is the area to the east of Castledale/Ferrron which is mostly sand and sandstone but I have seen quite a bit of limestone out there also and what appears to be old abandoned copper mines. There is supposed to be some interesting formations at or near Cedar Mt. but I haven't been right up to it yet, just close. The other area is that to the south of Hwy 70 from Red's Canyon on the west to Hwy 24 on the east. All of that country is red dirt and red rock and quite a few old uranium mines. I heard a story that one of the guards at the mines in Temple Mt would suppliment his income by finding gold nuggets out there in his off time. I doubt that the story is true as that country just does not look geologically supportive of gold deposits. All sandstone. The northern portion, to the east of Castledale, is where the Old Spanish Trail is located. This is the branch that came from north of Greenriver to around Molen then south over Fishlake Mt and eventually to Las Vegas and on to CA if I recall correctly. There is allegedly another branch off the original Spanish Trail that crossed the Colorado River at Spanish Bottoms just north of Cataract Canyon and the junction of the Green River and followed the Green northward to an area somewhere East of Temple Mountain in the San Raphael desert then turned westward toward Temple Mt and went up South Temple Wash, continued northwest to Coal wash near Hwy 70 and then tied into the main trail in the vicinity of Molen. Backtracking, at the crossing of the Green River at Spanish Bottoms another branch heades to the west thru the land of standing men, over sunset pass, crossing the Dirty Devil River in the vicinity of the Burr Desert and then to the legendary Spanish mine, the Josephine De Martinique. Supposedly this portion of the trail served no purpose other than to supply the mine and to haul the gold back to Sante Fe.
To support this legend are the stories of campers finding crudely smelted gold bars in the sands of Recapture Creek down near Blanding where it is thought the Spanish pack trains crossed the river at that point. I'm ramblin too much, I'll leave it here for now. Too many legends, too little time.

Of all the uranium mines I have been to I've only gone into two of them and not very far at that. I've heard stories of radon gas forming in them. In one of them on the east side of the Henry Mts along Crescent Creek the uranium is in petrified wood buried in the sandstone. I have a Victoreen CDV-700 gieger counter and that stuff will absolutely slam the needle against the peg. I brought a piece of it home to see if it would floresce at night but the wife put it somewhere in her rock garden and I never found it again. The next time I'm out there I'll get another sample. Gold has been found that creek too, I think there are still valid claims along parts of it. Not far from there, further up the mountain and to the north is an area called copper benches, I assume someone found copper up there. The Henry Mountains are rather a strange bunch of rocks. See www.onlineutah.com/henrym...tory.shtml
Supposedly the uranium that Madam Curie used in her experiment in France came from mines on the eastern slopes of the Henrys in an area called the Trachyte. There are old Vanadium mines around there also.