Scollan's neighbor down the road, Mike Boulland, scavenges treasures of his own, showing with pride the bricks he got for free that now line the walk in front of his home.

Scollan, Boulland, and their neighbors love a good find, as long as it is in keeping with the historic character of their beloved New Almaden community.

New Almaden is a nationally recognized historic district, and its residents, like Scollan and Boulland, are committed to maintaining the historic integrity of their homes and property.

To them, it's more than just ancient bricks and mortar.

"These houses are just as important to California's history as the Golden Gate Bridge and the trolley cars," Boulland said.

Home to the Quicksilver Mines, New Almaden was once the richest mining area in North America. Because of its important past, zoning regulations require New Almaden homeowners to be in keeping with historic preservation guidelines.

Boulland's home, referred to by locals as "house number five," was once a four-room cottage rented to mineworkers during the mining boom that began in 1845.

Boulland, a retired fourth-grade history teacher who gives tours of the town to schoolchildren, and his wife, Doreen, also a teacher, purchased the home seven years ago.

With the help of family and friends, they have painstakingly and lovingly restored and preserved portions of their home, maintaining the look and feel befitting a historic community.

Their son Mark helped carry out buckets of dirt from under the house to prepare a new concrete foundation, and the family spent hours restoring the path in front of the house, brick by brick.

"The point is to keep authenticity and character," said Dana Peak, historic heritage coordinator for Santa Clara County.

"What tells the story in the house is not just the look of it, but the technology available at the time."

The technology available at the time when Scollan's house was deeded in 1910 is what drove Scollan to pick up the wood-framed windows for his home.

Scollan is in the process of adding an additional 1,500 square feet to the house and refurbishing the original rooms of his New Almaden home. He is required to maintain the exterior look and feel of the time period in both the new structure and the renovated sections of the existing structure that can be seen from the road.

The backside, however, not held to the same restrictions, will sport a different façade, including modern double-pane vinyl windows.

Blending past and present, Scollan will use as much of the old original material as he can on the interior, where no restrictions guide him, while updating plumbing and electrical with energy-efficient products.

The original hardwood flooring in the front rooms of the house will get a facelift. The segments he has lifted in other parts of the house revealed antiquated insulation methods—sheets of newspaper.

The yellowed, brittle pieces of a 1927 San Francisco Examiner Scollan found under the floorboards will be turned by Scollan into a keepsake collage piece that he will display.

Down the hill in his backyard, surrounded by rescued bits and pieces of building material and treasured finds such as plates of wavy glass, sits a pile of bricks Scollan saved after removing them from the front of his home before doing the foundation work. He says he plans to clean each brick and reuse them on the front of the house to retain the authentic feel of the home.

"It'll be a lot of work to get the mortar off, but a lot of them clean up pretty easy," he said. "The material they used back then isn't as strong as what we use now."

The bricks of New Almaden tell tales, Boulland says, and in the sidewalk that he restored in 1997, he has more than 150 styles. They are all handmade, and many are stamped with the name of the brickmaker.

Attesting to their authenticity, he bends over and pokes three fingers in indentations marking one brick, and says, "Look, there are fingerprints left in this one."

Down the newly repaved road apiece—the town is celebrating Almaden Road's first makeover in 50 years—and just north of a historic structure known by locals as either the "toll house" or the "apartment building" sit some sad, lonely bricks. Drawing a line around what was once the town's general store, they tell a tale of frustration.

Frustration felt by Roger Papesch.

Papesch, who owns and lives in a house down the street and the "apartment building," bought the store property he calls "an eyesore" about three years ago. His intent was to recreate a building that looks as it once did.

"There are five pictures of New Almaden in the [Santa Clara] County building downtown. One of them is my store," he said. "That's what I want to make it look like again."

Papesch wants to build apartments on the site, but to build them in such as way as to look exactly as the building did before it burned to the ground in 1975, when the store stood with apartments attached. He plans to replicate the storefront exterior and fashion it as an apartment inside, but he's running into a brick wall with the county department of environmental health and its requirements for a new septic system.

The relative ease with which Scollan and Boulland have received permits to make improvements on their homes has not been the case for Papesch.

Papesch can get permits from the county to rebuild the structure, but he can't get past the department of environmental health's septic requirements.

The disparity lies in the fact that because Scollan and Boulland are working with existing structures, the rules are different than those that face Papesch, who wants to build a new one.

So, while Scollan forges ahead with his project, Papesch's plans to re-create a piece of history are stalled.

Scollan, like others in the area who make improvements to their homes, had to go before a committee for approval and present his plan. Because the property allowed enough clearance from the creek for the septic system, the permit process was unencumbered.

Even though there is an working septic system on the property, Papesch can't comply with the septic requirements—namely, having it set 100 feet from the creek and in a place that is not covered by asphalt—so he can't get a permit.

Getting permits is a costly process. Scollan figures he has put in more than $10,000 in surveys, site approvals, school district fees, tests and analyses, and fees before he even broke ground on his addition.

A mechanical engineer by trade, Scollan worked in the aerospace industry for 20 years. Now he spends about 30 hours a week doing most of the work on the house himself.

The house was once known by locals as "the old man's house." The "old man," who was often seen walking into town, cane in hand, planted the giant redwoods that keep watch over Scollan's land.

Redwood is the predominant wood found in Scollan's and Boulland's houses. In Boulland's house, the wood is visible in the rafters of the old carriage house, now used as his garage.

Boulland said that some repairs have been necessary throughout the house and in the garage, but not to any of the century-old redwood. The newer wood that had been used by different owners over the years is what has rotted.

Scollan's house reveals more beams, as he has opened up much of it to renovate and install the addition. Where he can, Scollan reuses the redwood, oftentimes needing only to plane away minor damage.

As damage occurs to the homes of New Almaden, owners like Scollan, Boulland, and Papesch try to preserve the rich history bound within the sturdy redwood frames and Portland cement. But Boulland said that hasn't always been an easy task, as Papesch has discovered.

"The county told me to let the house go back to nature," said Boulland, who has bought another home, an adobe building called La Casita de Adobe, which he hopes he can prove once belonged to the Berryessa family. He plans to restore that one, too.

It's more than just living in a quaint, quiet, quirky little town, says Boulland.

"The homes are beloved by the people who own them," said Maria Lynn of house number three.

The community is preserving history at their own expense, they said, receiving no financial support from foundations, because they cherish the quality of life in the town.

"The unique aspect here is that it is living history," Boulland said.