Qualla: The Kilns That Never Burned

The Kilns That Never Burned: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Kiln No. 1 is still loaded with limestone. It has been loaded since roughly 1855, when someone walked away from it and never came back. The charge was never fired, the stone never reduced to the calcium oxide that was the entire point of the enterprise. It sits there still, a 170-year-old to-do list item that no one will ever complete. The three Olema Lime Kilns, tucked against a hillside on the east bank of Olema Creek about five miles south of the hamlet of Olema, represent one of the more quietly poignant failures of the California Gold Rush - an industrial venture that lasted barely five years and produced almost nothing, yet left behind structures durable enough to outlast the ambitions that built them.

The Kilns That Never Burned: Shorb, Mercer, and the Mortar Market

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1850, two San Francisco entrepreneurs named James A. Shorb and William F. Mercer leased land from Rafael Garcia, a Mexican grantee who held title to the Olema Valley under the old Alta California land grants. California had been ceded to the United States just two years earlie...

The Kilns That Never Burned: Three Vaults Against a Hill

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The kilns were built into the hillside facing west toward the creek, each one a barrel-shaped stone vault enclosed in a rectangular outer casing of cut limestone. Kiln No. 1, the southernmost, was lined with fireclay and firebrick along the back half - the firebrick suggesting th...

The Kilns That Never Burned: The Deposits Disappoint

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The kilns were reportedly fired only a few times. The limestone deposits turned out to be small and of poor quality - insufficient to sustain a commercial operation. By 1855, the financial depression of that year removed whatever remaining incentive Shorb and Mercer might have ha...

The Kilns That Never Burned: What the Trees Reclaimed

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nature moved in quickly. A Douglas fir sprouted in the rubble between Kilns No. 1 and No. 2 sometime after 1870, according to tree-ring dating, and grew large enough to severely damage both structures. Another Douglas fir took root in the pit of Kiln No. 3. Human visitors did the...

The Kilns That Never Burned: Preserved in Their Failure

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The kilns now sit within Point Reyes National Seashore, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey. Their significance lies precisely in their brevity. California is littered with the remnants of Gold Rush industrie...