Mercury Storage Vault

Mercury Storage Vault (HMXNM)

Location: San Jose, CA 95120 Santa Clara County
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Country: United States of America
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N 37° 10.404', W 121° 49.574'

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Inscription
After cleaned mercury is collected, it was placed in iron flasks for transportation to market. A flask of mercury weighs about 76 pounds when filled and a flask needs to be strong because of the density of the liquid metal.

Filled containers of mercury were valuable (worth about $720 per flask in 1965), so they were usually stored under lock and key. This "vault" (upper left illustration) was used to store mercury flasks during the last twenty years of mining. The flasks would be accumulated until a minimum lot was available to sell to a broker, usually ten flasks. The miners would load the filled flasks into a truck or car and drive them to the broker. In the last years of mining, the broker was Quicksilver Products Inc. in Burlingame, California.

In the lower left photo, Andrew Dahlgren fills flasks at New Almaden, about 1894. From Images of America: New Almaden.
Details
HM NumberHMXNM
Series This marker is part of the Daughters of the American Revolution series
Tags
,
Year Placed2011
Placed ByThe California State Society, Daughters of the American Revolution and New Almaden Quicksilver County Park Association
Marker ConditionNo reports yet
Date Added Tuesday, October 21st, 2014 at 8:45pm PDT -07:00
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Locationbig map
UTM (WGS84 Datum)10S E 604201 N 4114753
Decimal Degrees37.17340000, -121.82623333
Degrees and Decimal MinutesN 37° 10.404', W 121° 49.574'
Degrees, Minutes and Seconds37° 10' 24.24" N, 121° 49' 34.44" W
Driving DirectionsGoogle Maps
Area Code(s)408
Closest Postal AddressAt or near 80-99 Deep Gulch Trail, San Jose CA 95120, US
Alternative Maps Google Maps, MapQuest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, MSR Maps, OpenCycleMap, MyTopo Maps, OpenStreetMap

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