178 



GEOLOGY AND QUICKSILVER DEPOSITS, NEW ALMADEN DISTRICT, CALIFORNIA 



Tepic, Mexico. This company took a 16-year lease on 

 the mine, and gave it, without even seeing it, the opti- 

 mistic name of "New Almaden," after the world's 

 greatest quicksilver mine in Spain. They dispatched 

 miners, money, and materials to California to start 

 production on a large scale, but the ship carrying them 

 was intercepted by the United States, and the equip- 

 ment was confiscated. In 1848 they sent a similar out- 

 fit from Mexico under Alexander Forbes. When 

 Forbes arrived at the New Almaden mine the only 

 underground working besides the Indian "cave" was 

 a shallow 25-foot adit. To prove the direction of the 

 vein, as was required to hold title, he began a lower 

 adit, and in November 1847 he reported that he had 

 intersected a vein so irregular that he still was unable 

 to tell its direction. To reduce the ore he obtained 

 4 iron pots, possibly the same whalers' trying pots 

 that had been used by Chard, and had each one of 

 them charged with 400 pounds of ore, covered and 

 sealed, and heated for a full day. The following day, 

 when the pots had cooled, the metal was dipped out, 

 and by this crude method 200 to 300 pounds of quick- 



silver per day was recovered. Forbes added lime to 

 the charge, and in 1848 he extracted by this proce- 

 dure 10,000 pounds of quicksilver in one 3-week pe- 

 riod and 20,000 pounds in a 2-month period (Lyman, 

 1848, p. 270-271). Only 6 miners worked on the 

 property, and by this time quicksilver was reported 

 to have been found in 15 or 20 other places within a 

 few miles of Mine Hill. 



Little is known about activity at the mine during 

 the next few years. The establishment apparently 

 grew rapidly (figs. 101, 102), and new and better fur- 

 naces were added, yet the mining methods employed 

 by the Mexican miners remained the same as those 

 which had been used for hundreds of years in the 

 mines of Mexico and Peru. The early workings near 

 the top of Mine Hill are described as resembling rab- 

 bit burrows, for the miners had followed leads up and 

 down in tortuous passageways, digging out "rooms" 

 wherever they found pods of ore. Somewhat more sys- 

 tematic development resulted from the driving of the 

 Main tunnel (fig. 103 and pi. 4), which was begun in 

 1850, was extended to 900 feet in 1853. and 1,800 feet 



FIODII 101. New Almaden reduction works In 1851. Small structures with sm.-ks In the right foreground are the nil multlchambered 

 retorts used to treat the very rich ore being mined at this time. View looking north : Deep Gulch In center of drawing. Prom an 

 original drawing by William Rich Button ; reproduced by permission of the Huntlngton Library, San Marino, Calif. 



