Mother Lode

Mother Lode belt of gold-bearing quartz veins, central Calif., along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The term is sometimes limited to a strip c.70 mi (110 km) long and from 1 to 6 1/2 mi (1.6-10.5 km) wide, running NW from Mariposa. Popularly it is used to mean the gold-bearing area E of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and W of the Sierra Nevada. The discovery of alluvial gold on the South Fork of the American River led to the 1848 gold rush. Mark Twain and Bret Harte helped make the Mother Lode famous.

moth·er lode • n. Mining a principal vein of an ore or mineral. ∎ fig. a rich source of something: your portfolio holds a mother lode of opportunities.

Mother Lode, name applied to the gold‐mining region of northern and central California, specifically to a belt running northeast by southwest from Mariposa, near Yosemite, to Georgetown, a distance of c. 120 miles. Gold was first mined there in 1848, but the great period began in 1849. In the first 25 years through 1874 production amounted to approximately $200,000,000. Literary associations of the region derive primarily from Bret Harte, who wrote a great number of stories about the gold rush days that preceded his own acquaintance with the area. Mark Twain also derived from the area the folk tale of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and wrote about the region in Roughing It. Other writers about the Forty‐niners and their followers include Alonzo Delano, “Dame Shirley”, and Bayard Taylor.