“I simply did a really cursory search of your telephone e book in San José, and I noticed a scattering of Cornish surnames,” Lengthy mentioned. Additionally on his journey to San José not too way back, he noticed the Ohlone-Chynoweth station signal for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.
“Chynoweth in Cornish means ‘new home.’ In order that acquired me considering, nicely, there’s acquired to be a motive you might have a Cornish title for a Cornish railway station in South San José,” Lengthy mentioned.
The 2 most outstanding settlements at New Almaden have been Spanish City and English Camp, however that was actually Cornish Camp, in the event you ask him.
A 1960 documentary collaboration entitled Quicksilver! famous that, even then, within the mid-Twentieth century, the mine was fading into the mists of time.
“The worldwide taste of the outdated mining camp is proven by the names that survive. Manyales. Danielson. Castro. At one time, 26 nationalities have been represented in New Almaden, they usually helped fill two different cemeteries up on Mine Hill, which have lengthy since been swept naked by memento hunters and the ravages of time.”
Cornish tradition has largely light into the rearview mirror within the South Bay, however Lengthy has an concept associated to his membership in a Cornish refrain. The Cornish are large singers. Right here’s Barrett’s Privateers singing The Miners’ Anthem.
Lengthy needs to take the band on tour to the South Bay, to reintroduce locals to our Cornish connections and light-weight a fireplace below our curiosity within the historical past.
“Possibly to hyperlink up with a museum and do some promotional singing in purchasing malls and that form of stuff, to offer folks an concept that the place they’re dwelling has a historical past that’s perhaps one thing they by no means knew about,” Lengthy mentioned.
Episode transcript
Olivia Allen-Worth: This story begins with three issues that don’t appear to be they belong collectively: Cornish miners, mercury poisoning, and Abraham Lincoln. They’re, nevertheless, all related to a mine within the foothills south of San José. We’re speaking in regards to the Almaden Quicksilver mine. Its glory days are lengthy gone, and so Bay Curious will get a number of questions on it. KQED’s Rachael Myrow is aware of all kinds of issues South Bay, so we referred to as her as much as reply a few of your questions. Hey, Rachael!
Rachael Myrow: Hey, Olivia!
Olivia Allen-Worth: So the Almaden Quicksilver mine sits in what’s immediately Almaden Quicksilver County Park. I visited some years in the past, and I bear in mind a sprawling park with rolling hills. I feel I went within the summertime, so it was very, very, highly regarded and fairly dry. However I can’t say I bear in mind the mine.
Rachael Myrow: That could possibly be as a result of there’s not a number of the mining equipment left. However in its heyday, within the nineteenth century, 1,800 miners and their households populated these hills, primarily in a few self-contained villages. Think about church buildings, saloons, a college, and far, way more. Now there’s only a few moldering cemeteries …and the outdated mine supervisor’s mansion, which has been became a museum, with actually restricted hours. I’m going to guess it was closed whenever you hiked or drove previous.
Olivia Allen-Worth: Hmmm, yeah. Will need to have been. Now, through the years on Bay Curious, now we have finished fairly a couple of tales that contact on the California Gold Rush, much less in regards to the Silver Rushes that adopted, however actually nothing about quicksilver. To be sincere, I don’t even actually know what quicksilver is …
Rachael Myrow: To be sincere, Olivia, neither did I earlier than reporting this story out. However mining it was a profitable hustle through the Gold Rush.
Olivia Allen-Worth: OK, nicely, earlier than we dive in, then, may we do some quicksilver 101?
Rachael Myrow: After all! The South Bay is stuffed with cinnabar, a vivid pink rock the colour of a cease signal. It fashioned 10-12 million years in the past throughout a time of intense volcanic and hydrothermal exercise. Chemically talking, cinnabar is mercury bonded to sulfur. Mercury being a extra correct title for quicksilver, by the best way …
Olivia Allen-Worth: That is actually taking me again to highschool chemistry class.
Rachael Myrow: Because it ought to! And what do you bear in mind about mercury, Olivia?
Olivia Allen-Worth: OK, nicely, it’s a liquid at room temperature, and that’s uncommon for a metallic. And it’s a silvery coloration…
Rachael Myrow: You’ve acquired it! To get mercury out of cinnabar, you warmth the rocks up and the mercury primarily sweats out. Now, mercury was tremendous necessary through the Gold Rush as a result of it was utilized by gold and silver miners to extract the valuable metals from the crushed rocks they have been trapped in. Right here’s Lynda Will, parks program coordinator at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation, to elucidate additional.
Lynda Will: So that you pour your mercury over that sand. The mercury form of grabs onto any valuable metallic. All of the sand and different waste rock is left alone and left behind. After which you might have — uh — seems kinda of like a silver putty. So it’s referred to as an amalgam, and then you definately warmth that amalgam to 1,076 levels, the mercury vapor goes off into the air, after which you’re left along with your valuable metallic, which could possibly be gold or silver. It often seems like spun sugar, virtually. It has all these holes the place the mercury had been. So then you’ll be able to take that spun gold, as we name it, and so you may make nuggets and even bars.
Olivia Allen-Worth: All proper, I get it. And these things will need to have been in excessive demand after the Gold Rush kicked off in 1848. I think about?
Rachael Myrow: Precisely. In 1845, California remains to be a Mexican territory. A Mexican cavalry officer named Andrés Castillero was driving via these foothills when he seen one thing uncommon — a fiery red-orange paint that native Indigenous folks have been utilizing on the partitions of close by missions. Castillero knew precisely what he was . He knew that pink paint needed to have come from cinnabar.
Olivia Allen-Worth: However how did he know?
Rachael Myrow: On the time Castillero made his discovery, the world’s primary supply of mercury was in Almadén, Spain. So Spain managed the availability. Which meant they might cost what they needed. Castillero, simply from studying the newspapers, would have understood mercury’s significance in financial phrases. So when Castillero noticed that cinnabar in 1845, he understood he was a possible fortune.
Olivia Allen-Worth: What was Castillero doing in San José anyway?
Rachael Myrow: He was despatched by the Mexican authorities to catalogue strategic property. Now, below Mexican legislation, officers and residents may declare mines they found for themselves. So when Castillero noticed the cinnabar, his life modified eternally.
Olivia Allen-Worth: And this brings us to one in all our Almaden Quicksilver listener questions! It comes from Kiera O’Hara of Santa Clara, who joined you, Rachael, on her second tour of the Almaden Quicksilver Museum. Second, as a result of she first visited when she was seven or eight years outdated. The museum is a daily pit cease for South Bay college kids.
Kiera O’Hara: What was the Civil Warfare historical past behind the Almaden mercury mine in San José? I bear in mind listening to Abraham Lincoln was concerned?!
Rachael Myrow: The museum sits within the Casa Grande, or large home, a 27-room Classical Revival mansion the mine’s superintendents used to reside in. As you’ll be able to think about, it wasn’t lengthy after Castillero found the cinnabar that different folks needed to take the mine from him, particularly after the Gold Rush despatched demand for quicksilver hovering.
So a number of events, together with non-public traders and mining corporations, tried to say the land, and the case went all the best way to the U.S. Supreme Court docket. In 1859, SCOTUS acknowledged Castillero’s declare, however the mine’s possession remained break up amongst a number of events. After which in 1861, the U.S. Civil Warfare began. And that is the place we get to Kiera’s query, about whether or not Abraham Lincoln was concerned.
Lynda Will: There was an aide to President Lincoln who went, “Oh, there’s sufficient questionability about who owns this land, so perhaps it’s owned by the U.S. authorities.
Rachael Myrow: Once more, the quicksilver mine is an apparent cash maker, and conflict is pricey. California gold was important to the Union’s conflict effort, offering greater than $170 million {dollars} in gold principally that stabilized the federal foreign money and paid for roughly 10% of issues like weapons and provides. For these of you questioning, $170 million {dollars} within the 1860s could be price roughly $7 billion {dollars} immediately.
So this aide is considering, ‘Why not declare the New Almaden mine and its earnings for the Union facet of the U.S. civil conflict?”
Lynda Will: And so he got here down with a marshal and even a cavalry behind him to say, “Lincoln’s going to take over this mine. And, , you’re supposed to simply give up it to me, the aide.” Then, mine supervisor, John Younger, mentioned ‘no!’
Rachael Myrow: So, simply put your self in John Younger’s footwear. Who the heck is that this aide exhibiting up hastily with troops behind him and a half-baked plan to take over the mine, as a result of says who?
Lynda Will: He acquired the miners and mentioned, “In the event that they take over the mines, you’re going to be out of a job. So come down with, , your greatest rifles and your weapons and, , assist me defend this.”
Rachael Myrow: First, Younger rallies his employees. And he fires off pressing telegraphs, not solely to different mine operators throughout California, however to a former Almaden supervisor who now sits inside Lincoln’s administration.
Lynda Will: And mentioned, “That is what’s occurring out right here. If he takes this mine, there’s the potential that he may take over each mine in California and the western United States.”
Rachael Myrow: Younger was primarily saying, if the federal authorities seizes this mine, it may set off a sequence response throughout the West, and at a second when the Union relies on the assist of California’s gold miners. There have been folks within the state who sympathized with the South through the Civil Warfare. So it might be actually, actually dumb to piss off Union supporters and drive them into the ready arms of the Confederacy.
Kiera, our query asker, requested if Abraham Lincoln was concerned. Lynda informed us it’s attainable Lincoln didn’t even know this complete struggle was happening, given how distracted he was with the Civil Warfare. Regardless of the case, John Younger’s fast considering — his calculated warning framed as patriotism — stopped a vivid concept from a authorities man that would have thrown California and the remainder of the Western U.S. to the Accomplice facet.
Olivia Allen-Worth: Once we return, we dig in on the environmental impacts of this mine. Plus a listener query in regards to the miners who as soon as labored there. Stick with us.
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Olivia Allen-Worth: So we’ve discovered that mercury comes from cinnabar. It was tremendous precious through the Gold Rush as a result of it helps separate gold from ore. And there was a giant kerfuffle over the possession of the Almaden mine that would have modified California’s posture through the Civil Warfare.
Subsequent, I need to contact on the atmosphere … since you don’t need to be a geologist to know mercury is a neurotoxin, and an enormous environmental hazard.
Rachael Myrow: Sure. Sadly, a few of that mercury made its method downstream, into the San Francisco Bay. In 2002 — not that way back — scientists recognized this mine as the only largest supply of mercury within the Bay, making the fish unsafe to eat for people and birds alike. I requested Lynda Will, parks program coordinator at Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation, about this very query …
Lynda Will: I can let you know somewhat bit about it. Yeah. Once we acquired the land within the mid-70s, Nineteen Seventies, there was fairly a little bit of mercury contamination of the land. Beneath the furnace yards was, , swimming pools of mercury. They’d paved roads with cinnabar waste rock, which we name calcines. They’d simply dumped it over the perimeters of the hills. They’d dumped it into the creeks. And so now we have been remediating it ever since.
Rachael Myrow: Native governments, together with Santa Clara County, which bought a part of the mine property for parkland, discovered themselves partially on the hook for a multimillion-dollar cleanup effort to adjust to the federal Clear Water Act. They did, I ought to point out, get assist from the state and the feds.
Olivia Allen-Worth: Is it protected for us to be on this park?
Rachael Myrow: Extra work and monitoring continues, however authorities say it’s protected to picnic, hike, journey horses, et cetera.
Olivia Allen-Worth: And what in regards to the fish within the Bay, can we eat them?
Rachael Myrow: Errr, that’s a distinct story, extra difficult. As not too long ago as 10 years in the past, 2 years then into the massive effort to scrub up the Bay, KQED explored this very query. Let’s simply say, they have been nonetheless describing it as problematic, not simply due to the direct legacy from mining days, however from stormwater runoff and air air pollution. As a result of mercury converts into methylmercury, which bioaccumulates up the meals chain, fish … particularly giant fish … can carry excessive ranges.
Clip from documentary: The Bay is slowly cleansing itself, washing 3,100 kilos a 12 months out to sea, however as a result of a lot has constructed up over time, it wants a serving to hand. … At a minimal, three generations might be impacted by the potent and long-lasting poison nonetheless lingering within the Bay mud.
Olivia Allen-Worth: In order that outdated adage, “Don’t fish off the pier,” sounds prefer it stays true immediately.
Rachael Myrow: Effectively, the longer-lived, large fish, particularly. In 2023, California’s Workplace of Environmental Well being Hazard Evaluation, or OEHHA, really helpful kids and girls of childbearing age avoid fish like sharks and striped bass. Ocean-going fish like Chinook salmon could be the safer guess.
Olivia Allen-Worth: Alright, in order that’s two questions dispatched. Let’s transfer on to query quantity three. It comes from Andrew Lengthy, who lives all the best way over in Cornwall — the county on the far south west tip of England. He got here to the Bay Space a while in the past to go to a relative and had some questions.
Andrew Lengthy: I’m Cornish from the U.Okay. I do know of the Cornish Camp on the Alamaden Quicksilver Mine. It could be nice to know if Cornish tradition survived, and is rising, like it’s right here with our language.
Rachael Myrow: Andrew stuffed me in on the lengthy, wealthy historical past of mining tin and copper in Cornwall, which extends all the best way again to the early Bronze Age, circa 2200 BC.
A few of you might be desirous about the British TV sequence “Poldark,” and also you’d be in the appropriate territory. There have been greater than 300 energetic mines in Cornwall within the 1860s.
However by the late nineteenth century, the trade had largely collapsed … and Cornish miners left in droves, touring internationally to locations like New Almaden searching for work.
Andrew Lengthy: So there’s a saying, in the event you go to the underside of a mine, a gap within the floor, on the backside of it you’ll discover a Cornishman.
Rachael Myrow: They took a little bit of Cornwall with them and left cultural proof in all places they went. In central Mexico, they launched the Cornish pasty, which turned, in Spanish, the paste. Over in Grass Valley, dwelling to a number of gold mining again within the day, there’s an annual Cornish Christmas Celebration. However within the South Bay, the historical past’s extra delicate, virtually hiding in plain sight. Like cinnabar.
Andrew Lengthy: I simply did a really cursory search of your — the telephone e book in San José — and I noticed a scattering of Cornish surnames.
Rachael Myrow: Cornish surnames like “Hicks” and even “Cornish.” Additionally, on his journey to San José, not too way back, and he noticed a curious station signal for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority.
Andrew Lengthy: There’s a station referred to as Ohlone-Chy-NO-weth. Or CHIN-oh-weth, as you name it. Effectively, Chynoweth in Cornish means “new home.” In order that acquired me considering, nicely, there’s acquired to be a motive you might have a Cornish title for a Cornish railway station in South San José.
Rachael Myrow: The 2 most outstanding settlements at New Almaden have been Spanish City and English Camp, however that was actually Cornish Camp, in the event you ask Andrew. Immediately, little stays of the realm’s once-bustling village life. Apart from the massive mansion that now homes the museum, the one hints are the nonnative cypress and poplar timber, and the spreading vinca floor cowl … inexperienced survivors of gardens lengthy since forgotten.
Right here’s a bit from a 1960 documentary collaboration I dug up between the Museum and Channel 11 Information.
Clip from documentary: The worldwide taste of the outdated mining camp is proven by the names that survive. Manyales. Danielson. Castro. At one time, 26 nationalities have been represented in New Almaden, they usually helped fill two different cemeteries up on Mine Hill, which have lengthy since been swept naked by memento hunters and the ravages of time.
Rachael Myrow: Cornish tradition has largely light into the rearview mirror within the South Bay, however Andrew has an concept, associated to his membership in a Cornish refrain referred to as Barrett’s Privateers. The Cornish are large singers. Right here’s Barrett’s Privateers singing The Miners’ Anthem.
Clip of The Miners Anthem
Rachael Myrow: Andrew needs to take the band on tour to the South Bay, to reintroduce locals to our Cornish connections and light-weight a fireplace below our curiosity within the historical past.
Andrew Lengthy: Possibly to hyperlink up with the museum and do some promotional singing in purchasing malls and that form of stuff, to offer folks an concept that the place they’re dwelling has a historical past that’s perhaps one thing they by no means knew about.
Olivia Allen-Worth: Due to Andrew, Kiera and to you, Rachael.
Rachael Myrow: My pleasure, as all the time!
Olivia Allen-Worth: It’s the beginning of a month, and which means a brand new voting spherical is up at BayCurious.org. Let’s hear your decisions …
Voice 1: Why is there a taco truck on each nook in San Francisco and San Mateo? They appear to have sprung up within the final 12 months or two.
Voice 2: Why are there big followers over the tunnels close to the Golden Gate Bridge?
Voice 3: What’s the story with the deserted cop automotive in entrance of the airport off 101? Everybody is aware of no precise cop is in it, so what’s the news with leaving it there?
Olivia Allen-Worth: Tally a vote in your favourite of these questions at BayCurious.org.
We’ve nonetheless acquired area in our upcoming Bay Curious Trivia recreation. Snag some tickets for you and your folks at KQED.org/reside.
Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED.
Our present is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Worth. With additional assist from Maha Sanad, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everybody on Workforce KQED.
Some members of the KQED podcast staff are represented by the Display Actors Guild, American Federation of Tv and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Native.
I’m Olivia Allen-Worth. Thanks for listening!
