page_title: Sulphur Bank Mine
section_title: Oxland theory
hierarchical_section_title: Sulphur Bank Mine / Geology / Oxland theory
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of misc rock piles next to Herman pit, looking northerly.
context_page_description: The Sulphur Bank Mine is located near Clearlake Oaks and Clear Lake in Lake County, California. The 150-acre mine became one of the most noted mercury producers in the world.
  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.
context_section_description: Becker sought out the mine to test the theory of Robert Oxland, a physician and mineralogist, formerly on the staff of the Toland Medical College in San Francisco, California  who also held a patent for refining tungsten from tin ore. Oxland believed the cinnabar ore at Sulphur Bank had been formed from hot springs. His thesis stated that hot springs brought metals in a dissolved state from igneous rock deep in the earth through a thick block of metamorphised ancient seabed to form cinnabar ore near the surface of the mine. Oxland also believed the cinnabar deposit was continually forming.
  Becker came to agree with the Oxland thesis.
  There were a number of mysteries about the Sulphur Bank that Becker attempted to solve. Among them was how sulfur had been delivered to the surface of the mine and why the sulfuric acid, created by oxidation and water had not dissolved the quicksilver deposited in the crevices of a layer of basalt near the surface.
  Becker concluded the sulfur of Sulphur Bank was deposited after the cinnabar had been deposited, because he could find no evidence of acid farther than 20 feet (6.1 m) below the surface of the mine. He wrote the acid would have thrown the cinnabar down, instead of migrating up with the sulfur through the basalt rock which covered the mine site.
  But Becker was mystified when the water of the flooded shaft was tested and it contained no quicksilver: "The absence of mercury from these waters was not a little perplexing," he wrote.
  He compared Sulphur Bank to similar geology in hot springs at Steamboat Springs, Nevada, which did contain mercury in solution.
   Becker theorized the ammonia in the water at Sulphur Bank precluded the mercury from the water.
caption: Rocks at the southeast shore of Hermann pit
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