backed off and Barron, Forbes Company was allowed to sell it to American investors for $1.75 million. Arthur De Wint Foote worked at New Almaden in the late 1870s under James Butterworth Randol. Representations of historical life at the New Almaden Mine were drawn in vivid detail by Mary Hallock Foote, the wife of Arthur DeWint Foote, the resident engineer from 1876. Her illustrated correspondence about New Almaden, "A California Mining Camp", appeared in the February 1878 issue of Scribner's Monthly. New Almaden also features prominently in her memoir A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West, which was later fictionalized by Wallace Stegner in his novel Angle of Repose. Environment Mining operations resulted in mercury pollution of the Guadalupe River and South San Francisco Bay, impacting birds and aquatic species. In 2005 the responsible parties, which include private companies and local government agencies, agreed to a legal settlement of approximately for restoration projects. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the US Fish and Wildlife Service issued an environmental restoration plan for the area in 2008. Geology The mineralized area in the Almaden mining district where the New Almaden and the nearby Guadalupe mine are located is within the large Franciscan Assemblage associated with the Coast Range. Quicksilver ore deposited by hydrothermal deposition of cinnabar from deep within the earth is found in a gangue of silica-carbonate rock formed locally by hydrothermal alteration of serpentine. The Guadalupe mine produced about 10% as much mercury as the New Almaden. There are several smaller mines in the mining district, but their ore production was not significant. The only significant quicksilver ore is cinnabar; other sulfides are present in small quantities. Mining, other than a single placer deposit of cinnabar, was underground. There is a high probability of undiscovered high-grade ore which could be found and exploited using modern techniques. New Almaden Mines The entrances to the mines are closed off. After being identified as a Superfund site and after subsequent containment activities, the mining area can now be visited as part of the Santa Clara County Almaden Quicksilver County Park. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961. By the time Santa Clara County bought the mines in 1976 and ended operations, 1,137,727 flasks totaling of mercury (worth more than US$70 million) had been extracted. The remains of a variety of structures left over from the 135 years of mining