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American War was getting
underway. And the government needed their
money to fight the war and refused to pay him, so
Castillero sold his
shares in the Santa Clara Mine to an English firm, the
Barron, Forbes
Company of Tepic, Mexico, and was never to return to this
"first legal
mining claim in California."
Alexander Forbes was well aware of the value of mercury. He
acquired
two-thirds interest, sight unseen, and renamed his holdings
the New
Almaden Mines, believing from the samples of ore he was
given that their
potential was as great as the famous, centuries-old Almaden
quicksilver
mines in Spain. (That name came from the Arabic al maden
--- the mine.)
Forbes brought in Mexican mineros, who seemed to have a
sixth sense
when it came to following a vein of ore, and they settled
in Spanishtown.
spanishtown
Aside from the fact that
several adobe brick buildings and an 1854 oven-
dried brick house remain in the current town of New
Almaden, California,
there is an interesting brick story to be told. The ore was
brought to the
surface and graded into three piles. The highest grade was
called gruessa,
and was very pure. Good ore that was mixed with other rock
was called
granza, while the lower quality dirt that was left over was
called tierra. It
was too fine to "cook" in the furnace, as it would pack
down and block the
flow of heat. Therefore, it was moistened, formed into
bricks, and laid out
to dry in the sun. These were called tierra bricks or
tierra adobe.
Thousands of these bricks were delivered from the mines and
stacked
around the Hacienda de Beneficio ( literally the Property
for the
Exploitation of the Mine, or Reduction Works). In the early
days the ore
was delivered from Mine Hill over two miles of dirt road
down to the
Hacienda which was on the only flat area to be found. Road
conditions
stopped the wagon traffic during the wet winters, and it
was then that the
tierra bricks were "cooked" to keep the furnaces operating.
Originally, cast iron whaling try-pots were improvised into
a furnace.
Later, brick retorts were built and by 1854 there were
fourteen brick
furnaces operating. This was followed in 1864 by five
continuous furnaces
made from bricks. Needless to say, the Hacienda also had
its own
brickyard! The wage scale for 1889 lists a mason at $150
per month, while a
miner made $1.50 per ten hour day. Hazardous arsenic with
sulphate of
mercury fumes that accumulated in the low Hacienda area
were removed
by brick flues built on the hillside which led uphill to
two tall brick
chimneys. This was no doubt the first industrial smog in
California.
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