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Traveling to the cinnabar mines of New Idria in July 1861, natural scientist William Brewer described the surrounding area in his journal as a “scene of unmixed desolation,” saying that the approximately 200 miners had “little besides the necessities, and if any luxuries come in, it is only at an extravagant price. I can hardly conceive of a place with fewer of the comforts of life than these mines.”
That same month, Monterey County Surveyor B. B. Barker was commissioned to map out a road that would make it easier for supplies to be sent to New Idria, and for the mercury produced from the cinnabar to be brought down to San Juan (Bautista was added later), 73 miles away, on its way to San Jose. The boom was about to begin.
In “New Idria Quicksilver: History of the New Idria Mining District,” by author Ray Iddings, he wrote,“The history of New Idria has been largely neglected because its remote location has somewhat camouflaged its existence. But it is one of America’s most important mining operations.”
Cinnabar was long known to the Indigenous population of the New Almaden area as a source of red pigment, but in the 19th century, the mercury extracted from it had many medicinal and industrial uses, including in the making of explosives, percussive caps, barometers, thermometers, dental fillings, vapor arc lamps, medications and mirrors.
However, the discovery of cinnabar at New Idria in 1854 coincided with the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Mercury played a critical role in the processing and refining of gold, and the over two dozen mines in those desolate hills had a seemingly unlimited supply.
When digging in New Idria began in 1851, prospectors were looking for something entirely different: silver. According to the Monterey Sentinel of Nov. 10, 1855, they raised $9,000 to launch the Aurora Silver Mine, but all they discovered as they dug was an abundance of chromite, a common and relatively worthless ore they had mistaken for silver.
However, many of the miners had worked at the New Almaden mines outside of San Jose where cinnabar had been discovered in 1845. As they continued to search for silver, the miners recognized pockets of cinnabar and suddenly there were at least 30 claimants to the discovery—and an even larger number of squatters. The claims and counterclaims in the ownership battle would go on for close to 40 years and would see court fights over Mexican Land Grants, failed attempts to resolve the claims through congressional legislation, and a landmark Supreme Court decision, The Secretary v. McGarrahan (1869).
The “New Idria Matter” even got President Abraham Lincoln’s attention. He was reported by the Santa Cruz Sentinel (March 9, 1867) as having said “Where is New Idria, that all departments of the Government are nearly upset about it? Congressmen, Senators, Generals, Captains, and even privates seem to be concerned.”
For the first few years, the question of who owned which claim was just one factor slowing production at the mines. Another was the lack of a decent road: Isaac Mylar, in his “Early Days at the Mission San Juan Bautista,” recounts that in poor weather, a team of horses bringing supplies and equipment to the mines could take as many as three days to reach their destination.
Mining companies often paid San Juan merchant Daniel Harris, one of their biggest suppliers, with mercury, according to John H. Martin, in his unpublished “Mission San Juan Bautista: The Causes and Effects of its Rise and Decline (1933).” But, he said, nobody would think to try to steal it either on the trail down from the mines or when it arrived in San Juan.
When he would receive two or three flasks for his goods, Harris would drop them in the yard behind his store. Since each container weighed some 350 pounds when full, they were just too difficult for even a dedicated bandit to make off with one or, if they managed that, to sell what was inside.
The mercury flowing to Harris was not the only influx of money into the small town. San Juan was the most developed city for 100 miles, and miners would make regular trips to spend their pay. This helps to explain why a town of about 700 residents could support over 20 bars and a similar number of “fancy houses.”
It was a welcome break for the miners, who lived tough and dangerous lives. Brewer describes spending six hours in the mine’s tunnels, with pathways at times precarious in the extreme and temperatures ranging to 100 degrees in places.
“Sometimes we climbed down by a rope,” he wrote, “hand over hand, bracing the feet against the wall of rock, sometimes on escaladors, sticks merely notched. Although so deep in places, there is no water, save very little in the deepest drift. ”
The workers refining the ore, roasting it in giant furnaces and collecting it from condensers, also suffered. “Many have their health ruined by three or four days’ labor,” Brewer wrote, “And all are injured. But the wages, $20 a day, always bring victims.”
And living so far from “civilization” had other hazards as well. Iddings described the district as “a wilderness occupied by wild beasts, sparsely settled by frontiersmen and infested with criminal hideouts.”
A miner could meet his death from a bear just as easily as from a thief. The newspapers were rife with stories of people murdered for their wages, which were paid in gold coins. The stagecoaches headed to New Idria, carrying those coins, were also regular targets for desperados like Turburcio Vasquez, who also used the district as a hideout.
Despite its isolation and hazards, by 1865, the Sacramento Bee reported regular shipments of 1,000 flasks of quicksilver out of the mines (Sept. 30, 1865). Iddings estimated that the district’s population grew to approximately 4,000 miners and residents by 1880, over five times as many as lived in San Juan and around 60% of San Benito County’s population. According to Iddings, New Idria became the largest mercury producer in the Western Hemisphere by 1900.
“During the production life of the New Idria mines,” Iddings wrote, “its cinnabar deposits produced about 584,152 flasks or 44,336,762 pounds of mercury worth, in today’s market, about $1.5 trillion.”
Mining operations ceased in 1974 and in 2011, the district was listed as a Superfund cleanup site due to extensive mercury contamination. Today, New Idria, a registered California Historic Landmark, is fenced-off and largely deserted.
Stay tuned for more reporting on New Idria. In 2024, BenitoLink will be running articles on highlights of the county’s history throughout the year to commemorate San Benito County’s 150th anniversary.
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