My great, great uncle, Acosta is the oldest documented miner to discover the cinnabar and other minerals in the big bend area during the mid 1800s.

Heading to Big Bend in a few weeks, and was struggling to find geology content. This is interesting, approachable and cute graphics - thanks!

Good job. I've been to Big Bend nearly twenty times since 1971 but have never been to the mine. Going again in March 2024... Will try to make it then.

The book, "Quicksilver: Terlingua and the Chisos Mining Company" by Kenneth Ragsdale might be interesting to you. It is a rather thorough study of the neighboring Chisos mine. Thank you for the video. Subscribed!

Thanks for the wind sock. All KZfaqrs should that trick. The graphics are so cute.

Well done !!

Good job! Coincidently I climbed up to Emory Peak today from Chisos campground and watched this while resting at campsite afterword as this came up on a search for Big Bend geology.

GREAT Episode!!!! Subscribed!!! Keep it up!!!!

Love this! Easy to understand and super cool

I never understood the concern about mercury contamination from this mine. I mean, the entire purpose of this mine was to remove the cinnabar from the environment and they were pretty thorough in that regard, which is pretty much the same thing as what decontamination efforts would accomplish. The tailings and waste material from this mine is virtually absent of sulfides and heavy metals, it was pretty much all cinnabar and host rock. Before they started mining here, significant amounts of cinnabar could be found on the surface, and that deposit had been eroding away into the environment for thousands and thousands of years without devastating ecological effects. Side note, some of the tailings in the Terlingua cinnabar mines contained a rare form of fluorescent calcite. It's found nowhere else in the world, apparently. It might be fun to walk around those tailings with a UV light to see if any could be seen there as well. My guess is that all the calcite tailings came from around the Buda layer where the cinnabar was found, which didn't have the same mineralization here as it did in Terlingua, and thus the tailings probably don't contain any Terliguite.

Awesome video, thanks. How far is the "parking" to the mines? Can you drive all the way up to the mines?