[1] During the 150 years since the Sulphur Bank was discovered, the area has drawn geologists, inspired unique scientific theories, established constitutional case law and now attracts environmental scientists who study the impact of mercury contamination within the Cache Creek watershed of northern California and the Sacramento River-Delta Region and San Francisco Bay.

[3] The officers of the California Borax Company included physicians Veatch, William Ayers and Robert Oxland; and lawyers Henry Halleck, Archibald Peachy, Frederick Billings and Solomon Heydenfeldt.

Blankets and bacon, beans and hard bread rose to a premium,” reported William T. Montgomery in a light-hearted sketch of the great silver rush that resulted in enormous finds of worthless iron pyrites.

In 1873,[11] the defunct California Borax Company was acquired by Tiburcio and John Parrott, William F. Babcock and Darius Ogden Mills, for the purpose of quicksilver mining at Sulphur Bank.

“It is greatly to be regretted that the management of this property has not taken pains to preserve geological descriptions of the underground works, which are all caved in, except the Empire shaft, now in progress of sinking.

The latter is so tightly timbered, owing to bad ground, that it offers no opportunity’ to study the formations through which it has passed,” wrote William Forstner, of California State Mining Bureau.

The record of the Sulphur Banks since has been constant litigation and abandoned works, but it is believed by many that rich ore still exists there,” as the history of Mendocino and Lake Counties summarized events.

[33] In addition, a July 17, 1902 article related a series of complex stock manipulations involving the Empire Consolidated Quicksilver Mining Company.

“United States Marshal Henkel sold by auction yesterday 379,985 shares of the stock of the Empire Consolidated Quicksilver Mining Company, which was bid in for $750 by William Hughes of 100 Nassau Street.

[40] Frederick Bradley dropped out of school, borrowed $5,000 and took over ownership/management of the existing Spanish mine on the south fork of the Yuba River, setting a record for low-cost ore production.

Between 1894 and 1904 Bradley made the money-losing low-grade ore profitable but at the cost of a civil war between the mining company and the Western Federation of Miners union.

Testimony at the 1906 murder trial of Big Bill Haywood, the union treasurer disclosed the two assassination attempts on Bradley in San Francisco in 1904.

A freshwater wetland is located to the north of the mine, and critical habitat for three endangered species of wildlife, the peregrine falcon, southern bald eagle, and yellow-billed cuckoo, is less than a quarter-mile from the site.

The EPA completed an emergency remediation in 1992, where the slope of mine tailings was cut back along the shoreline, covered with clean soil and reseeded.

"[54] This difficulty is shown by tracer experiments conducted by UC Davis in 1997 and 1998 to find the subsurface water flow from the Herman Pit to the lake.

[56] Deep core samples of sediments taken in the 1980s show peaks of mercury during prehistoric times that "likely originated from natural processes such as volcanic and/or tectonic activity within the Clear Lake Basin" [56] A report published in Geology, November 1987 theorized, "that mercury-rich geothermal fluids rose along the activated fractures and faults and were discharged into the lake, causing the anomalously high Hg[Mercury] content of the sediments and leading to deposition of the Sulphur Bank Hg deposit.

"[57][58][59] The EPA-funded research by UC Davis found that total levels of mercury (TotHg) in the lake sediments has "not declined significantly a decade after" the remediation work in 1992 at Sulphur Bank Mine.

Rick Sugarek, project manager for the Superfund site told the Lake County News in 2009 that the EPA has been working with the state on a cleanup plan, but a main sticking point has been the need to run a treatment plant to deal with the water in the Herman Pit.

The company operated a concrete block plant at Sulphur Bank Mine and used the tailings to produce 27 different bricks of varying colors and size.

[66] Between its rise as a geological wonder and its fall from grace as an EPA superfund site, the Sulphur Bank Mercury Mine was able to attract admirers that reads like a Who's Who of California History.

The first was John Allen Veatch, physician, land surveyor and mineralogist who gave the Sulphur Bank its name in 1856, while on a quest for a domestic supply of borax.

[3] “In due time, I again reached the “white hill,” Veatch wrote in a letter that now serves as a history of discovering the Sulphur Bank and Borax Lake.

The external crust, composed of sulphur mixed with sand and earthy impurities, formed a concrete covering of a whitish appearance, hiding the true nature of the mass beneath.

Through the fissures, which seemed to communicate with the depth below, hot aqueous vapors and sulphurous fumes constantly escaped," Veatch wrote in his letter to the California Borax Company, dated 1857.

At least one cave-in did occur in October 1881, A New York Times report [69] of the incident alludes to loss of life, but those who died in the accident were not Chinese; The five miners were all of Cornwall, England.

"The labyrinth of deep, open pits and trenches, and the acrid dust and evil smells of the locality produce a strong impression on the observer; but even to the geologist, it is an interesting rather than an agreeable one," Becker reported.

[74] He found many interesting things about the mine and made the site world-famous after the Encyclopædia Britannica quoted a synopsis of his theory, mentioning Sulphur Bank specifically in the entry on cinnabar.

[75] Becker, a professor at the University of California, authored The Geology of the Quicksilver Resources of the Pacific Slope, published in 1888 by the United States Geographical Survey.

[88] The Environmental Protection Agency has exclusively focused on mining activity at Sulphur Bank as the source of mercury contamination of Clear Lake.

Researchers from the University of California, Davis, studying the mine through grants from the EPA, could find no trace of mercury in the 27-acre (110,000 m2) acidic pond now known as the Herman Pit: A parallel to Becker's 1887 observation.