November 19, 2005

Out of the Past

New Almaden Walking Tours offer historic look at
California’s first, biggest and richest mine

By Jeanne Carbone Lewis
Staff Writer

I’ve always enjoyed the scenic drive to New Almaden. Stress disappears from the fast pace of city life as you turn down the two-lane Almaden Road marked by the Feed and Fuel. Passing new mega-houses, you eventually enter the quiet ranch homes with fenced arenas for horses.

The Bulmore House adobe as it stands today on Almaden Road. Photo by Jeanne Carbone Lewis.

A little more than two miles down the road and you arrive at Casa Grande in all its old-world grandeur. But really, this is where the journey begins. Nowhere else in Almaden Valley does the past permeate a neighborhood as it does here.

A visit to the sleepy hamlet of the Hacienda is offered on the New Almaden Walking Tour. And the 1.6-mile loop from Casa Grande offers a unique perspective of life at California’s first, biggest and richest mine.

New meets the old where the self-guided walking tour begins at Casa Grande. Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation offers a brochure at the mining museum and is well worth your time to pick up. Monuments have
been dedicated through the years at many of the historic locations and buildings. The following is a sampling of the sites you will experience on the Walking Tour’s 32 points of interest:

The big house
Casa Grande was originally built in 1854 as a hotel. So wonderful a structure with its double verandas and grilled iron fencing, mine manager and overseer Henry Halleck immediately moved in on completion. From then on, all subsequent supervisors enjoyed the splendor of the big house uncommon to mining communities.

Men and women dressed to the nines and enjoying the manmade lake in back of Casa Grande, circa 1885. Photos courtesy of New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum

Built by Francis Meyer, the two-story brick structure was originally white stucco with green shutters. The eight bedrooms upstairs feature four corner fireplaces with a central bath. The opulence continues on the outside grounds with five acres of manicured lawns and picnic area, but missing today is the manmade lake with water siphoned off from the Alamitos Creek that runs the length of the walking tour.

Today, Casa Grande houses the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Department and the Quicksilver Museum, guard keepers to the history of the area. A stop at the museum will further educate one to the mining operations of the area.

The cottages
Off for our stroll through the past of the mining community, we begin with a walk south on Almaden Road filled with homes that workers and officials lived in and raised their families. Most of the structures are occupied and the residents have carefully restored the old buildings. Many are historians themselves and love to chat about the area.

Almaden Road is canopied by old-growth trees nestled with mountains on either side. Imagine a dirt road instead of the two-lane paved street. Remnants of the acequia, a ditch that served as a waterway for the area, are visible in some sections.

Cottage 1 is known as the Randol Family Home, recently christened by the plaque that adorns the front. It was the head mining engineer’s office in the 1850s and the second largest structure on the road featuring eight rooms. It is believed that mine manager J.B. Randol moved into the house when he remodeled Casa Grande in 1870.

Resident doctors called it home, most notably Dr. A. R. Randol, J.B.’s brother. Dr. F. V. Hopkins succeeded him in 1878. Robert Burnett Smith, the company accountant, moved in shortly after.

Note the cottages in the background have not changed much since 1908. Photos courtesy of New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum

Scotsman John Young, a trader and sailing captain, called Cottage 2 home in 1847. He arrived at the Hacienda with one of the owners of the Barron Forbes Mining Company [the mining company’s original name] and became superintendent of the operation. Cottage 3 resident was H.J. Huttner, a mechanical engineer who constructed the brick furnace for the mine. Actor J. L. Shaw called Cottage 5, also known as Casa Nuestra (our house), home in 1878. The structure has recently been dedicated with a plaque and with the moniker the Hauck House. Fred Hauck, Sr. was the mine company’s accountant and financial manager from 1915 to 1930.

But amid the homes is a red barn structure that looks like trouble. Those predisposed to criminal activity spent their time at El Vespero (evening prayer), also known as the jail. Yarns passed down through time tell that there really was very little crime at the Hacienda and that the building was mostly used to sober up the inebriated instead of escorting them downtown some 12 miles away. To the rear of the building was the blacksmith shop.

The cottages continue down Almaden Road, a testament to the living history of the area. The Bulmore adobe was built in the 1860s and was the home of the last president of the mining company. The Carson-Perham adobe built in 1850 was the home of George Carson, the mine company bookkeeper, postmaster, telegraph operator and Wells Fargo Agent. In the 1950s, it was the home of Constance Perham who opened the first Almaden Quicksilver Museum at the site.

St. Anthony’s Church from one millennium to another. Still standing today (above) and in 1899 (below). Photo above by Jeanne Carbone Lewis

Tolls, magic potions and a church
The tollgate was the entrance to the Hacienda. A gatekeeper collected tolls and checked security admittance for visitors to the mining area. The outsiders would enter on horseback or on wagons at the bridge area. The tollgate house still stands today on the corner of Almaden Road and the bridge to Bertram Road but it has had many past lives; once the post office, a barber shop and even a tamale restaurant. Today it houses apartments.

You may be mesmerized by the eye-level buildings, but glance up the hill to the right at Almaden Road and the tollgate. There, a chimney still stands that carried sulfur out to the atmosphere and away from the mining community. It is one of three original smokestacks and the only one that remains today.

Across the one lane bridge and to the right on Bertram Road is a monument erected for the New Almaden Vichy Water Company. Here, a mineral water was processed beginning in 1867 and sent around the world for its claimed curative powers. When the main shaft of the mine was sunk, the mineral water slowed to a trickle. If one ventures under the bridge, bubbles may still be seen rising from Las Alamitos Creek.

Kitty-corner is St. Anthony’s Church. Mine manager Laurence Bul-more’s great aunt, Guad-alupe Madera, raised funds for the church when her son returned home from the war at the turn of the century. The mining company donated a large sum as well and completed the building in 1899. Mass is still held there on Saturdays.

A few steps away is the site of the Helping Hand Hall, built in 1886. All that remains is the metal roof but it was once a two-story building that included a large assembly hall, a theater fashioned after the Tivoli in San Francisco, a game room and a kitchen. Holidays, birthdays and celebrations were a welcome distraction for the mining community at this locale in the Hacienda.

Across the street stands the Hacienda Hotel. It housed visitors to the mine for many years, but was originally constructed as a boarding house for single mine managers. It is now the home of the chic La Foret Restaurant.

Six feet under
The walking tour continues up the idyllic hillside of Bertram Road. The three-quarter-mile-long road twists and turns up and down grades. The homes are an eclectic mix of wood cabins and remodeled structures harmoniously melding to create a rustic charm between the mountains and the Los Alamitos Creek. About half way up the road, is the Hacienda Cemetery where many of the mining community came to their end six feet under.

A white picket fence surrounds the cemetery. The walkways are lined with a rich green carpet of myrtle. Mature laurels and oaks create a shadowy presence above the fenced grave cribs, some marked with marble headstones, others carved in wood.

Hacienda Cemetery is where many of the mining community are buried. Photo by Jeanne Carbone Lewis

One headstone stands out: Richard Bertram ‘Bert’ Barrett, His Arm Lies Here. Besides being the namesake of the road (Bert lived at Cottage 5), he lost his appendage in 1898 at the age of 13 in a hunting accident. It found its final resting place because the law at the time stated that a limb must be given a proper burial. ‘Bert’ lived a long life and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in 1959.

The cemetery remained in use through the 1920s until Ben Black, a musician best known for writing the song “Moonlight and Roses,” bought the property east of the creek and planned to subdivide it. He cut a road through the center of the cemetery and the outraged New Almaden residents filed a lawsuit against him. He lost the property at a tax sale at which time Gene Vennum purchased the graveyard. In 1974, Vennum quitclaimed the property to the California Pioneers who maintain the site today.

Past the cemetery are many summer cottages built in the 1920s and the site of the Hacienda School. Back to Almaden Road from Bertram, one passes over a one-lane wooden bridge providing access over the gurgling Los Alamitos Creek and the way back to Casa Grande.

The New Almaden Walking Tour is a fascinating jaunt where the past lives amidst the present and the residents act as the gatekeepers to history.

Copyright 2005 Jeanne Carbone Lewis