When his first idea, a clothing drive at his synagogue, didn’t pan out, he turned to Malone – who has written books on the history of Silicon Valley and the rise of Apple and Hewlett-Packard – for advice. Taich latched onto the story of Almaden Quicksilver’s mines because he needed a public service project to become an Eagle Scout before he turned 18 last December. It wasn’t all progress: Mercury contamination makes it unsafe to eat any fish caught in the Guadalupe Reservoir at the park. It was the second-most productive mercury mining operation in the world. They held contests to prove who could pound a spike the deepest into a granite slab.įrom 1845 to 1976, seven New Almaden mines produced nearly 84 million pounds of mercury, Taich’s brochure notes. It’s a fascinating tale: Miners - most from Mexico but also from Europe and South America - came to the New Almaden mines, where they blasted chunks of cinnabar ore and distilled the “quicksilver,” essential for prospectors seeking gold and doctors taking children’s temperatures. The result of their work is a brochure that guides hikers along a 6.5-mile route taking in most of the major mining sites and telling the story of a time when men with picks and black powder extracted mercury from the rugged hills. Taich and Malone couldn’t do anything about the climb or the sites, but they could – and did – do something about the map. The map at the park’s trail heads is cryptic at times. The Santa Clara County Parks Department put up interpretive panels at a few sites, but not all. Even if you find them, you don’t always know what you’re seeing. The mining operations at Almaden Quicksilver pose two struggles for hikers: the steep slog up into the hills and the scattershot locations of the surviving remnants.
Together, the Sunnyvale duo – the younger a Homestead High senior and the elder a longtime author and high-tech journalist – made a little history of their own: a first-ever guide to hiking through the rusty remains of San Jose’s mercury-mining heritage at Almaden Quicksilver County Park. Mike Malone, his mentor and assistant scoutmaster, thought the South Bay needed a trail celebrating the region’s history. Zack Taich needed to notch one more good deed to become an Eagle Scout.
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The remains of a variety of structures left over from the 135 years of mining activity, including housing for the up to 1,800 miners, are scattered about the park, with the biggest concentration at what was known as English Camp, established by Cornish miners in the 1860s. By the time Santa Clara County bought the mines in 1976 and ended operations, 83,974,076 pounds (37,388 metric tons) of mercury (worth more than US$70 million) had been extracted. The mines were highly important during the California Gold Rush, since mercury was used to extract gold from ore.
The park's New Almaden Mines were in operation from 1847 to 1976. The park is named after the New Almaden Quicksilver Mines, which were named after the mercury mine in (old) Almadén, Spain, and produced mercury that was used to process ore during the Gold Rush.
The Casa Grande Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum is located in nearby New Almaden. Adjacent to the park is the Almaden Reservoir. Its grounds include the Guadalupe Reservoir and features sweeping views of San Jose. The park is owned by the County of Santa Clara and managed by the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department. The park's elevation varies greatly: the most used entrances (on the east side of the park) are less than 600 feet (183 m) above sea level, while the highest point in the park is over 1,700 feet (518 m) above sea level. Bobcat in wintertime, 100 meters from the trailĪlmaden Quicksilver County Park is a 4,163 acres (17 km²) park that includes the grounds of former mercury ("quicksilver") mines adjacent to south San Jose, California, USA.