One such set of buildings, once staffed by the firefighters who protected the hills and wildlife surrounding the mining community of New Almaden, is the carriage house, barracks and supervisor's cottage that was the Almaden Road fire station.

Though the fire station ceased operations in 1972, the station's buildings are still standing and serve as rental housing units. The firefighters who once lived and worked here can still see slivers of history tucked away in the corners and feel nostalgia for the simple, wood-framed buildings, and the current owners have no intentions or desires to change it.

"I want to keep this as original as it was," says Hafez Modirzadeh, who manages the rental property and co-owns it with his siblings. Modirzadeh has noticed the continued spread of developments inching toward New Almaden. "We feel this encroachment."

There were originally four structures in the fire-station complex, built in 1936 by the Civilian Conservation Corps—sometimes called "Roosevelt's Tree Army" because it was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's emergency conservation work measure to restore forests by putting to work hundreds of thousands of urban unemployed during the Depression. The cottage that housed the station's captain is situated behind a two-story mess hall and garage—sometimes called the carriage house—and the firefighters' barracks. A free-standing water tank was the fourth structure, but it has since been removed.

The station's land was obtained by the department of natural resources in a 1934 gift deed from Harry and Florence Alden, who had earlier attained the property from Bernard Black. (Delinquent taxes owed on the property for the fiscal year 1934­35 were $2.28 with a 20-cent penalty assessment for late fees—less than today's cost of a loaf of bread.)

"When we were sleeping in the barracks, we could see the sky through the slats in the roof," says retired firefighter Zack Snyder, remembering that the original station was built with single-wall construction.

"There was no insulation," echoed Dick Mauldin, the station's captain from 1965 to 1970.

In 1972, the California Department of Forestry decided a modern facility was needed, and it traded the property and buildings to the New Idria Mining Co. in exchange for land elsewhere and eventually built a new station on McKean Road.

Eventually, Ed and Judy Blandford bought the property and sold it to Modirzadeh's parents, who willed it to Modirzadeh and his siblings.

The barracks, now fitted with modern insulation, is currently occupied by Molly Masters, who shares the unit with Robert Gardiner. She says she loves living in the rural-feeling town and enjoys being able to keep her horses in the corral behind her unit, which is just a short ride from the Almaden Quicksilver County Park.

"The firehouse is the house that I'm in," says five-year resident Masters, referring to the barracks. "There's eight closets in the hallway. That's where they stored their suits—where each fireman went to put his suit in. There's a switch in the hall for the fire alarm."

The common-looking, ranch-style barracks sits up the hill, peeking out from behind the shoulder of the carriage house, which is distinguishable only by the two garage doors on the lower level that dominate the structure as they face the road. Modirzadeh says it's used mostly for storage now, but horse-loving Masters likes to imagine the days when a horse-drawn carriage was stored there instead.

In later years, firefighters had a little trouble fitting modern-day fire engines through the opening, Mauldin says.

"When the red lights were on the front of the engine, it wasn't too bad. But when they added the rotating beacons on the top it was more difficult. If we had a full tank of water, we could fit it in. If it was empty, it would rip off the beacons when you were backing it in," he says.

Records indicate the structures were all recommended to be razed and remodeled in 1945 at a cost of $6,000—though Mauldin and Snyder say there is no evidence that the work was ever started.

Repair costs have risen since that time, and so have the rents. The supervisor's cottage, which, according to a lease agreement, included a kitchen—but no "mechanical refrigerator"—bathroom, living room, and one bedroom, commanded $15.50 per month from Richard Chadwell, the forest firefighter foreman in August 1953. When E. Bruce Franks became foreman in 1956, he paid 38-percent higher rent at $21 per month for the same dwelling.

The highest rent Mauldin can remember paying was $27, but he says the rent fluctuated during the five years he and wife Carmella lived there.

Modirzadeh has managed the units for about five years and wouldn't disclose precise costs, but says each apartment rents for around $1,100 and $1,400.

A jazz musician and music professor who now teaches at San Francisco State University and has previously taught at San José State University, Modirzadeh says he is committed to preserving the buildings and has an appreciation for the mining area's past.

"I want to really hold on to it in a historical way," he says. "It really is the last bastion of San Jose."