Almaden Valley, San Jose

The Hacienda de Beneficio in New Almaden, shown in 1852.

View of Almaden Valley (William Rich Hutton, c. 1847–1852).

Almaden Valley's origins go back to the early 1800s in what is now its southernmost neighborhood, known as New Almaden (Spanish: Nueva Almadén). In the 1820s, there were several attempts by local Californio officials from the Pueblo of San José to mine the area for silver, including an 1824 venture led by Don Antonio Suñol, a prominent local figure, and Luis Chaboya, of Rancho Yerba Buena.[11]

Quicksilver (mercury) was only successfully identified in 1845, by Mexican cavalry captain Andrés Castillero, who was able to obtain a grant to mine the area by Governor Pío Pico.[11] However, occupied with his military responsibilities, Castillero sold his claim to the mines to Alexander Forbes, then serving as the British Consul to Mexican California.[11] The area was named after the ancient Spanish mining town of Almadén, where mercury has been mined since Roman times.[12][11]

Mercury was extracted from the New Almaden mines from the time of the California Gold Rush until 1975. Many of the names in Almaden retain their mercury mine themes, such as Silver Lode Lane and Silver Mine Drive. Many places in Almaden still use the name Quicksilver.

The Old Almaden Winery, founded in 1852, was the first commercial winery established in California.

Following the American Conquest of California, Almaden Valley attracted a significant amount of settlers from the East Coast and Europe.

In 1852, Charles LeFranc founded Almaden Vineyards, the first commercial winery in California,[13] with his father-in-law Éthienne Thée, using vine cuttings from his native France. Following Prohibition, the winery and the company had great success with their blush wine and the White Grenache Rosé, one of the first popular pink wines in the United States. Almaden Vineyards has since moved its winery to Madera, California, while the historic remains of the property are now known as the Old Almaden Winery, which serves as a public park and California Historic Landmark.[14]

Beginning in the late 1800s, Almaden was home to the Graystone Quarry (originally the Goodrich Quarry), one of the most significant quarries in the Bay Area, used in the construction of landmarks including San Francisco City Hall, Stanford University, Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph, among numerous others. Today, the area where Graystone Quarry once existed and where the Pfeiffer family once lived is occupied by the neighborhood of Pfeiffer, also known as, the Graystone of Almaden, thus named after the quarry's stone master Jacob Pfeiffer and the Quarry[15][16] [17][18]

A community picnic in 1908 at the Casa Grande in the New Almaden neighborhood of Almaden Valley.

In December 1959, the Regents of the University of California selected Almaden Valley to be the site of the next campus of the University of California system.[19] Unfortunately, news of this decision caused property values in the area to increase so rapidly that the Regents could no longer afford to buy the needed land.[19] After another year of study, the Regents selected another site much farther south, which opened in 1965 as the University of California, Santa Cruz.[19]

In 1968, Calero County Park was established around Calero Lake in the Calero area of southern Almaden.[20] Calero Lake was created in 1935, when Arroyo Calero was damned.[21]

In 1975, the New Almaden mines closed after 135 years of operation. Santa Clara County Parks subsequently purchased the vast property surrounding the mines, in order to transform it into a regional park. Almaden Quicksilver County Park opened a few years later after an extensive clean-up of the area. It is declared a National Historic Landmark and a California Historical Landmark.

Almaden Valley is home to an expansive trail system, including:

• Los Alamitos Creek Trail is a 9.4-mile out-and-back trail[22]
• Almaden Lake Loop Trail, a 1.4-mile trail[23]
• Almaden Quicksilver County Park, 4163 acres with several trails across the park[24]
• Calero Creek Trail and Mine Trail, 18 miles of unpaved hiking trails
• Guadalupe Creek Trail, is a 1.7-mile trail[25]
• Mount Umunhum trail, a 7.7 mile trail in the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve to the summit of the mountain
• Senador Mine Trail, Mine Hill Trail, and Castillero Trail, a 12.7 mile trail
• Webb Canyon, New Almaden, Cinnabar, Mine Hill, Randol and Prospect #3 Loop Trail, a 5.4-mile trail
• New Almaden, Mine Hill and Guadalupe Trail Loop, a 13.6-mile loop trail

Also notably, Bay Area Ridge Trail, the 550-mile hiking, cycling, and equestrian trail being built on the ridgelines around all of San Francisco Bay Area includes Almaden Valley's Los Alamitos Creek Trail, Calero Creek Trail, Mount Umunhum Trail and Almaden Quicksilver County Park.

Casa Grande, home of the New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum.

Casa Grande was constructed in 1854, under the direction of the mine's general manager, Henry Halleck, who used the building until 1920 as a personal and official residence for the New Almaden Mining Company. John McLaren, of Golden Gate Park fame, assisted in designing the five acres of formally landscaped grounds around the house.

In 1997, Santa Clara County purchased the building to house the Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum, which started as a private collection by Constance Perham, who displayed it in her house in New Almaden. The new museum opened in 1998. The building underwent extensive renovation from 2009 to 2010 to restore it to its configuration when it was a mine manager's residence from 1854 to 1925. It reopened in January 2011. It houses interpretive exhibits and displays on the history of the New Almaden mines and on the lives of its workers and their families.[44]

The historic Hacienda Hotel, now home to La Forêt, one of San Jose's most famous French restaurants.

In the mid-1800s, just a few years before the great California Gold Rush, Andres Castillera, a Mexican officer with the Artillery discovered cinnabar in New Almaden, a precious metal also known as quicksilver which bought Castillera lot of riches. As the word spread, New Almaden was thriving with miners trying to mine more cinnabar themselves.

In 1848, a boarding house was constructed by the creek in New Almaden as a house for boarding for the miners. Hot meals were served in the rustic dining room downstairs. This was the first two-story lodging in California. Fire destroyed the building in 1875 but it was rebuilt and stayed in operation in this capacity until the 1930s.

It was then converted into Cafe Del Rio which served New Almaden for almost 40 years.

In 1992, La Foret, a high-end French restaurant opened in the building. The restaurant, still in operation, is a local landmark in San Jose and well known across the Bay Area for its fine dining[45][46][47]

Old Watchtower of New Almaden.

A two-teacher school was built in the 1860s on a flat near Casa Grande. Enrollment came chiefly from the Hacienda along with some children from nearby ranches. One of the oldest buildings in the district is the Carson-Perham Adobe, built between 1848 and 1850 by Mexican miners, and later the home of George Carson, the mine company bookkeeper, postmaster, telegraph operator, and Wells Fargo agent. Constance Perham lived in the adobe house for many years and established a private museum there in 1949, the collections of which were purchased in 1983 by Santa Clara County.[48]

Almaden Expressway is the primary arterial road that intersects through Almaden Valley, linking it to the rest of Santa Clara Valley with connections to the West Valley Freeway (CA 85) and the Guadalupe Freeway (CA 87)

Blossom Hill Road, an important artery for South San Jose and Los Gatos also passes through Almaden.

Until 2019, Almaden station of the VTA light rail was the main rail connection in the area. Since its closure, the closest VTA light rail station is Ohlone/Chynoweth station (VTA) on the VTA blue line.