Cinnabar, or cinnabarite, also known as mercurblende is the bright scarlet to brick-red form of mercury(II) sulfide (HgS). It is the most common source ore for refining elemental mercury and is the historic source for the brilliant red or scarlet pigment termed vermilion and associated red mercury pigments.
San Benito County, officially the County of San Benito, is a county located in the Coast Range Mountains of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 64,209. The county seat is Hollister.
Almadén is a town and municipality in the spanish province of Ciudad Real, within the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha. The town is located at 4° 49' W and 38° 46' N and is 589 meters above sea level. Almadén is approximately 300 km south of Madrid in the Sierra Morena. The name Almadén is from the Arabic: المعدن, romanized: al-maʻdin, lit. 'the metal', 'the mineral' or 'lode', and so by extension, the place where these are excavated, 'the mine'. Originally a Roman, and later, a Moorish mining settlement when taken from the Visigoths, the town was captured by the Christians in 1151 under king Alfonso VII and given to the Knights of the Order of Calatrava.
Idrija is a town in western Slovenia. It is the seat of the Municipality of Idrija. Located in the traditional region of the Slovene Littoral and in the Gorizia Statistical Region, it is notable for its mercury mine with stores and infrastructure, as well as miners' living quarters, and a miners' theatre. Together with the Spanish mine at Almadén, it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2012. In 2011, Idrija was given the Alpine Town of the Year award.
The Carson River is a northwestern Nevada river that empties into the Carson Sink, an endorheic basin. The main stem of the river is 131 miles (211 km) long although the addition of the East Fork makes the total length 205 miles (330 km), traversing five counties: Alpine County in California and Douglas, Storey, Lyon, and Churchill Counties in Nevada, as well as the Consolidated Municipality of Carson City, Nevada. The river is named for Kit Carson, who guided John C. Frémont's expedition westward up the Carson Valley and across Carson Pass in winter, 1844. The river made the National Priorities List (NPL) on October 30, 1990 as the Carson River Mercury Superfund site (CRMS) due to investigations that showed trace amounts of mercury in the wildlife and watershed sediments.
Almaden 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. The park's elevation varies greatly: the most used entrances are less than 600 feet above sea level, while the highest point in the park is over 1,700 feet above sea level.
Terlingua is a mining district and census-designated place (CDP) in southwestern Brewster County, Texas, United States. It is located near the Rio Grande and the villages of Lajitas and Study Butte, Texas, as well as the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The discovery of cinnabar, from which the metal mercury is extracted, in the mid-1880s brought miners to the area, creating a city of 2,000 people. The only remnants of the mining days are a ghost town of the Howard Perry-owned Chisos Mining Company and several nearby capped and abandoned mines: the California Hill, the Rainbow, the 248, and the Study Butte mines. The mineral terlinguaite was first found in the vicinity of California Hill.
The Diablo Range is a mountain range in the California Coast Ranges subdivision of the Pacific Coast Ranges in northern California, United States. It stretches from the eastern San Francisco Bay Area at its northern end to the Salinas Valley area at its southern end.
The Sulphur Bank Mine is located near Clearlake Oaks and Clear Lake in Lake County, California. The 150-acre (0.61 km2) mine became one of the most noted mercury producers in the world.
New Almaden, known in Spanish as Nueva Almadén, is a historic community and former mercury mine in the Capitancillos Hills of San Jose, California, located at the southwestern point of Almaden Valley in South San Jose. New Almaden is divided into two parts: the mines and much of their immediate surroundings, including historic ghost town settlements in the Capintancillas, which together form the Almaden Quicksilver County Park, and the largely residential historic district surrounding the Casa Grande.
The Bingham Canyon Mine, more commonly known as Kennecott Copper Mine among locals, is an open-pit mining operation extracting a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, in the Oquirrh Mountains. The mine is the largest human-made excavation, and deepest open-pit mine in the world, which is considered to have produced more copper than any other mine in history – more than 19,000,000 short tons. The mine is owned by Rio Tinto Group, a British-Australian multinational corporation. The copper operations at Bingham Canyon Mine are managed through Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation which operates the mine, a concentrator plant, a smelter, and a refinery. The mine has been in production since 1906, and has resulted in the creation of a pit over 0.75 miles (1,210 m) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 under the name Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine. The mine experienced a massive landslide in April 2013 and a smaller slide in September 2013.
San Benito Mountain is the highest mountain in the Diablo Range of California. The summit is at an elevation of 5,267 feet (1,605 m). The rock is composed of asbestos (chrysotile), an ultramafic rock. It weathers to produce serpentine soils with characteristically low levels of nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium, and high levels of magnesium and heavy metals including nickel and chromium. This means little vegetation grows in the area though there are some plants that only grow on such soils like the local endemic San Benito evening primrose. The Clear Creek Management Area includes the San Benito Mountain Research Natural Area, recognized for its unique pine and incense cedar forest assemblage. The Mediterranean climate is punctuated by cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers.
Clearcreekite is a carbonate mineral, polymorphous with peterbaylissite. The chemical formula of clearcreekite is Hg(1+)3CO3(OH)∙2H2O. It has a pale greenish yellow color and streak with tabular subhedral crystals and good cleavage on {001}. It is transparent with vitreous luster and uneven fracture. Its density (calculated from the idealized formula) is 6.96 g/cm3. The mineral is monoclinic with the space group P2/c. Clearcreekite is an extremely rare mineral from the Clear Creek mercury mine, New Idria district, San Benito County, California. It was probably formed after the alteration of other mercury minerals such as cinnabar. The mineral is named after the locality where it was found.
Leviathan Mine is a United States superfund site at an abandoned open-pit sulfur mine located in Alpine County, California. The mine is located on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada at about 7,000-foot (2,100 m) elevation, 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Markleeville and 24 miles (39 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe. The mine site comprises approximately 250 acres (100 ha) of land surrounded by the Toiyabe National Forest, which is only accessible a few months a year. The approximately 22 million tons of sulfur ore-containing crushed rock at the mine are responsible for contaminating the Leviathan and Aspen Creek, which join with Mountaineer Creek to form Bryant Creek which ultimately empties into the East Fork of the Carson River. These water bodies are listed as 303(d) impaired. The site location is seismically active.
Clear Creek is a 9.9-mile-long (15.9 km) tributary of the San Benito River in California, in the United States. The creek is the site of Clear Creek Management Area, operated by the BLM, and is known for its mineral abundance. The headwaters area of the creek is the only known location of gem quality benitoite, the designated California State Gem.
Heritage of Mercury. Almadén and Idrija is a joint UNESCO World Heritage Site in Almadén, Castile-La Mancha, Spain, and Idrija, Slovenia. The property encompasses two mercury mining sites. In Almadén mercury has been extracted since Antiquity, while in Idrija it was first found in 1490.
The Atlas Asbestos Mine Superfund Site is located within the Clear Creek Management Area near Fresno County, eighteen miles northwest of Coalinga, California. The mine started operating in 1963, covering 435 acres of a large naturally occurring asbestos deposit. The mine closed in 1979 and was placed in the EPA's National Priorities List (NPL) in 1983 due to the pollution of asbestos in the surrounding soil, air and water creating potential health hazards for local populations and environment.
The New Idria Mercury Mine encompasses 8,000 acres of land in the Diablo Mountain range, incorporating the town of Idria in San Benito County, California. Idria, initially named New Idria, is situated at 36°25′01″N120°40′24″W and 2440 feet (680m) above mean sea level. The area was, in the past, recorded in the US Census Bureau as a rural community; however, Idria has become a ghost town since the closing of once lucrative mining operations in the early 1970s.
The California Gulch site consists of approximately 18 square miles in Lake County, Colorado. The area includes the city of Leadville, parts of the Leadville Historic Mining District and a section of the Arkansas River from the confluence of California Gulch downstream to the confluence of Two-Bit Gulch. The site was listed as a Superfund site in 1983.
The Klau/Buena Vista Mine is a Superfund site located approximately 12 miles west of Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo County, California. It consists of two abandoned mercury mine sites that are located on adjacent properties on a northwest–southeast ridge of the Santa Lucia Range in the California coastal mountains. Mercury mining and ore processing operations occurred at these mines between 1868 and 1970.
