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The Quicksilver Rush 150 Years Ago There Was a World Wide Struggle for a Little Known Commodity Known As Quicksilver

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The Quicksilver Rush 150 Years Ago There Was a World Wide Struggle for a Little Known Commodity Known As Quicksilver The Quicksilver Rush 150 years ago there was a world wide struggle for a little known commodity known as Quicksilver. This story ends at the last Quicksilver mine (still operating in the 1970’s) right here in West County at a hamlet called Mercury. Quicksilver The word ‘quicksilver’ sounds like another shortcut to a flimflam…like the term ‘fools gold’. But, quicksilver does have value, it is the slang name for ‘Mercury’. You may also think “Big deal, old fashioned thermometers, how much money is in that?”. Back in the olden golden days, prospecting, mining, and speculation in quicksilver was big buckeroos. The Bay Area was the capital of quicksilver (at just the right time), and Sonoma County had a flurry of boomtowns. Refining Rocks into Gold When gold miners realized they could no longer pick up nuggets in the stream and the excitement of the '49er migration faded, gold mining became just another extraction industry. Hydraulic mining engineers knew that the way to recover gold (and silver) from low-grade ore was by a process called There was only one problem, there amalgamation, the was no Mercury in California. All treatment of ground-up the processed Mercury was in ore with mercury to Europe, it would have been too extract gold. expensive to transport a million tons of Mercury around the world to the California gold fields. The Richest Mine In 1845 Captain Andres Castillero, a Mexican soldier, diplomat and scholar, was sent to Alta California. While exploring south of Yerba Buena he recognizing a reddish color cliff as probably being cinnabar, he proceeded to test the ore and discovered that it was indeed cinnabar. He filed a claim for what would become the richest mine in California and the largest quicksilver mining area in the Americas. He named it New Almaden, after the greatest quicksilver mine in the world, Almaden in Spain. Twenty-eight months later, the discovery of gold sparked the great migration of people to California. Soon after arriving miners realized they needed quicksilver to amalgamate with gold. The boom town of New Almaden became an integral part of the gold rush because its quicksilver was readily available and inexpensive to ship to the Mother Lode. Wagons loaded with flasks traveled to the port of Alviso where the flasks were shipped to San Francisco for shipping up to the gold fields and the Western Hemisphere. This local source of quicksilver made gold & silver mining lucrative in the Americas keeping the ‘rush’ going for decades. In the late 1860’s not only was gold also being mined up in the Trinity Alps, but silver was discovered in Nevada’s Comstock Lode (outside Reno). By the 1870’s New Almaden mine could not produce enough mercury to satisfy the overwhelming demand for gold and silver, so the price of quicksilver skyrocketed. Silver Mines A Hell Scape The were hundreds of geysers spewing acrid sulphur fumes into the air. Prospectors referred to the rocky landscape as the ‘devil’s cauldron’. Mercury is an extremely rare element in Earth's crust, Mercury ores usually occur in very young, high density rock seems that are forced to the Earths crust, often in volcanic regions. (wikipedia) Quicksilver Fever By late 1873, the Russian River Flag (Healdsburg) reported “the subject of quicksilver mining has become so prominent at the Geysers that the whole region has been overrun by prospectors seeking their fortunes in the silvery fluid. Nearly every spot that could be suspected of harboring mercury has been claimed.” The Quicksilver Rush The Gold Rush was immediately followed by the new rush to find Quicksilver deposits to produce mercury. The Eastern Hills of Sonoma County are called volcano country. Think of the largest geyser activity in California… Geyserville. All that geothermal activity is from smoldering volcanos. Once prospectors reported finds at the ‘Geysers’, literally hundreds of prospector swarmed over these volcanic hills to stake claims. BoomTown One of the Geyser’s early (and more famous) Quicksilver mines was at ‘Pine Flat’. Within a year there were 4,000 miners working the mine. Some of the miners were white, but most were Chinese and Mexican in separate labor camps. Ghost Town Within two years the Pine Flat mine had played out and everybody left. Such is the fate on mining camps. Last load from the Pine Flat mine? Robert Louis Stevenson had just married and considered ‘squatting’ in the abandoned ghost town of Pine Flats. He decided against it, and went on to squat on Mt. St. Helena where he wrote Silverado Squatters. Mercury Town… the West County Quicksilver Mine Just up the road from Guerneville is the oldest operating Quicksilver mine in California excerpt from Sonoma County Quicksilver Mining (2016) West County Quicksilver Boom Town Over the last 150 years, the West County Quicksilver mine has had many names: Great Eastern, Mount Jackson, Roaring Lion, and Sonoma International. Then Now The mining camp grew into a company town that still exists. It also has gone by many names: Mercury, Sweetwater, and Sweetwater Springs. Why did the Sweetwater Mine last so much longer than the ‘Geyser’ Mines? Geysers This is a very intriguing question. In most cases a mine closes because the mineral vein runs out. But there were literally hundreds of mines spread across the ‘geysers’ region. After a little digging (haha), here are few of the reasons why Sweetwater last a hundred years longer: Higher Grade Ore - 2-3 times more mercury per tonne Ample Fuel - the mine operations at the Geysers burned every stick of wood within 10 miles. Remote vs. Guerneville - The Geyser mines were remote, Sweetwater was walking distance from Guerneville Flexible Labor Force - During the ups & downs of Mercury market prices, Sweetwater could close and reopen on a monthly basis since the Guerneville labor force could work other in-between jobs. All these factors meant that Sweetwater could ride the market movements and reopen when it was profitable. Which was more important: Gold Rush or Quicksilver Rush Some would say the gold rush would have ended when all the nuggets were pick up in the first 6 months of the Gold Rush. Without Quicksilver being found in the Bay Area and shipped up river to the gold fields, 98% of the gold would not have been recoverable. But, since quicksilver was found, hydraulic mining for gold lasted 60 more years. Ultimately 12 billion tons of earth was washed down the Sierra rivers (8 times the amount of earth dug up for the Panama Canal). “da wata ain’t sweet no mo” Sweetwater Creek is my colorful example of mining destruction. During the Gold Rush miners dug up 12 billion tons of earth, and used mercury to extract gold from the ore. The amount of mercury required to violate federal health standards is equivalent to one gram in a small lake. Approximately 26,000,000 pounds of mercury was used in Northern California gold mining, mostly in the Sierra Nevada and the Klamath-Trinity Mountain areas. The amount of mercury lost into the Northern California environment from the 1860’s through the early 1900’s is estimated at 3 – 8 million pounds. As you can see from the maps, Sonoma and Clear Lake Counties were the Mercury Mecca for Quicksilver prospectors. These mines follow the tectonic rift ridges that is now commonly called the ‘Geysers’. As you are driving along backroads of the Coastal Hills and see a scare along the side of a mountain, there is a high probability that it is an abandoned mine. Toxic Tailings When you drive up Sweetwater Creek Road into the old mining district you will look down on a canyon of mining residue. Every time it rains more of this toxic mountain drains into the Russian River. Not to worry…this is a tiny toxic tributary, since upstream on the Russian River there are a 100 times more tailings leaching downstream. Not a Ghost Town Not only is the mine full of squatters, but the entire valley has hidden away RV encampments, tent cities, and gonzo off-the-grid’rs. Mailboxes with no houses for a hundred feet? Gold Rush vs. Gold Ridge Would California be a better place today if gold had not been discovered in the foothills of its boundary mountains 160 years ago? There are historians who think so. They believe our settlement would have been slower, more deliberate and less chaotic. The alternative narrative personifies ‘Gold Ridge’. Our land base in West County did not have nuggets of gold to justify its name. This was the term that fortune hunting farmers (who bounced back from the gold fields with empty pockets) used for our soil. It was ‘Gold Ridge’ for a farmer, anything would grow. This was the slower path to a good life vs. the ‘Rush’. Years later Luther Burbank would approve of the name Gold Ridge by referring to it as “Natures Chosen Spot” for his Experimental Farm. Now when we look back at the destructive aftermath of mining on our environment, maybe the glittering Rush has lost some of its luster. Sweet Road Trip Some spring day take a drive out of Guerneville and catch Sweetwater Springs Road (before you get to Armstrong Redwoods). It will take you back 100 years, but only 30-40 minutes by auto. .
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