Yesterday we drove down early to my son and his wife’s home and then journeyed to nearby New Almaden to the Almaden Quicksilver County Park because I’d recently learned that a book I love, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, is partly set there, I wanted to see the area in person.  

The New Almaden mines are the oldest mines in California and were one of the most productive mercury mines in the country. The indigenous Ohlone people utilized the area for its cinnabar, which they used in paint production. You can see photos on-line of their decorated faces. But then, others came in to mine the cinnabar, the most common source for refining elemental mercury.