MINES 



163 



it has been operated intermittently, and it yielded two- 

 thirds of its entire output during the the second of 

 its four main periods of production. (See table 17.) 



TABLE 17. Annual production of the Guadalupe mine, Santa 

 Clara County, Calif. 



History and production 



The early history of the Guadalupe mine is scantily 

 recorded, and the available records are somewhat con- 

 tradictory. The ore deposits were probably first 

 recognized by Josiah Belden, who is said (Irelan, 

 1888, p. 542) to have encountered cinnabar-painted 

 Indians along Guadalupe Creek in 1846. Little is 



known of the early development of the mine except 

 that at some time before September 1850 an adit had 

 been driven ; a property conveyance of that date re- 

 fers to the mine entrance as an established landmark 

 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1857). After September 1850, 

 when California was admitted into the Union, the 

 ownership of the mine property, claimed by several 

 groups on the basis of Spanish land grants, was tested 

 by a series of lawsuits, which resulted in the award- 

 ing of the property first to one and then to another 

 mining company. In 1854 the mine was being worked 

 by the Santa Clara Mining Association of Baltimore, 

 Md., 14 and the same company continued to work it 

 until 1875. No complete production records for this 

 period are known, though records of the California 

 State Division of Mines (Ransome and Kellogg, 

 1939, p. 360) credit the mine with a production of 

 1,175 flasks in 1857 and 1,654 flasks in 1866. These 

 figures, however, probably represent productive peaks, 

 for the total estimated production during the period 

 from 1850 to 1875 was only 20,000 flasks. 



In 1875 the Santa Clara Mining Association was 

 thoroughly reorganized and began a $750,000 devel- 

 opment program, which included the erection of 4 new 

 Scott furnaces of 50 tons daily capacity, surface im- 

 provements, and extensive underground exploration. 

 From then until 1884 the Guadalupe mine was in its 

 hey-day; in 1879 it reached an alltime peak produc- 

 tion of 15,540 flasks, only 4,974 flasks less than that 

 of its neighbor, the New Almaden mine. Much of 

 the large income resulting from this production seems 

 to have been put back into development, for during 

 this 9-year period the Old Mine south of Guadalupe 

 Creek was fully developed, and north of the creek 

 the Old Hill and Moreno areas were explored. Large- 

 scale operation in the Old Mine virtually ceased late 

 in 1882, though the mine was again worked during 

 a, 7-month period in 1884, when 1,353 flasks of quick- 

 silver was extracted from ore taken from the old 

 stopes. With the decrease in the price of quicksilver 

 after 1880 to around $30 a flask, this latest operation 

 did not prove profitable; the production of the entire 

 mine fell rapidly, and in 1886 the mine was closed 

 down. A 14-year period of idleness accompanied by 

 litigation followed, and the title passed first to the 

 Coleman estate and later to James Coleman. 



Late in the fall of 1889 a working lease and option 

 with a sale price of $250,000 were given to Hugh C. 

 Davey and William Spiers, who early in 1900 formed 

 the Century Mining Co. This company remodelled 

 the furnaces to obtain a capacity of 80 tons of fine 



i 1 * Gould, H. W., 1925, Unpublished private report on the Guadalupe 

 mine, November. 



