Mother lode is a term associated with the mining of gold and silver, and refers to a principal vein or zone of veins of gold or silver ore. "Gold mine" redirects here See Goldmine for other uses of the term Gold (ˈɡoʊld is a Chemical element with the symbol Au (from its Latin name aurum) and Atomic number 79 Silver (ˈsɪlvɚ is a Chemical element with the symbol " Ag " (argentum from the Ancient Greek: ἀργήντος - argēntos gen In Geology, a vein is a finite volume within a rock, having a distinct shape filled with Crystals of one or more Minerals which were precipitated An ore is a volume of rock containing components or Minerals in a mode of occurrence that renders it valuable for mining The term probably came from the Spanish veta madre, a term common in old Mexican mining. Veta madre, for instance, is the name given to a seven-mile long silver vein discovered in 1548 in Guanajuato, New Spain (modern-day Mexico). Guanajuato is the name of a state in Mexico and that state's capital city as well as a river in the area The Viceroyalty of New Spain (Virreinato de Nueva España was a name given to the Viceroy -ruled territories of the Spanish Empire in North America, The United Mexican States ( or commonly Mexico (ˈmɛksɪkoʊ () is a federal constitutional Republic in North America. [1]
In the United States, Mother Lode is most famously the name given to the long alignment of hard rock gold deposits stretching northwest to southeast in the Sierra Nevada of California. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The Sierra Nevada ( Spanish for "Snowy Range" is a Mountain range located in the U California ( is a US state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. The California Mother Lode is a zone from one to four miles wide and 120 miles long, which stretches from Georgetown in El Dorado County on the north, through Amador, Calaveras, and Tuolumne counties, south to Mormon Bar in Mariposa County. Georgetown is a Census-designated place (CDP in El Dorado County, California, United States. El Dorado County is a County located in the Gold Country of the U Amador County is a county located in the Sierra Nevada of the U Calaveras County is a County located in the Gold Country of the U Tuolumne County (tuːˈɒləmi "To All o' Me" with a silent N is a county located in the Sierra Nevada of the U Mormon Bar is a populated location in Mariposa County California. Mariposa County is a County in the US state of California, located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains It was discovered in the early 1850s, during the California gold rush. The California Gold Rush (1848&ndash1855 began on January 24 1848 when Gold was discovered by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California The zone contains hundreds of mines and prospects, including some of the best-known historic mines of the gold-rush era. Individual gold deposits within the Mother Lode are gold-bearing quartz veins up to 50 feet thick and a few thousand feet long. The California Mother Lode was one of the most productive gold-producing districts in the United States, but is now given over to tourism. [2]
The California gold rush, as with most gold rushes, started with the discovery of placer gold in sands and gravels of streambeds, where the gold had eroded out of the hard rock vein deposits. The California Gold Rush (1848&ndash1855 began on January 24 1848 when Gold was discovered by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of Gold. Placer mining (pronounced "plass-er" refers to the mining of alluvial deposits for Minerals This may be done by open-pit (also called open-cast Placer miners followed the gold-bearing sands upstream to discover the source in the bedrock. Bedrock is the native consolidated rock underlying the surface of a terrestrial planet usually the Earth. This source was the "mother" of the gold in the river and so was dubbed the "mother lode". In Geology a lode is the metalliferous Ore that fills a Fissure in a rock or a vein of ore deposited between layers of
A popular misconception is that small veins of gold or silver ore in a mining district are necessarily branches of a single rich and massive mother lode deep in the ground. This idea is contrary to modern theories of ore deposits.
The term is also used metaphorically to refer to the origin of something valuable or in great abundance. Metaphor (from the Greek: μεταφορά - metaphora, meaning "transfer" is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects
References
- ^ Alan M. Bateman (1942) Economic Mineral Deposits. New York: Wiley, p. 465-466.
- ^ A. H. Koschman and M. H. Bergendahl (1968) Principal Gold-Producing Districts of the United States. US Geological Survey, Professional Paper 610, p. 55
See also
Placer mining (pronounced "plass-er" refers to the mining of alluvial deposits for Minerals This may be done by open-pit (also called open-cast Gold Country (also Mother Lode Country) is a region in the central-and-north-eastern part of California, United States. The California Gold Rush (1848&ndash1855 began on January 24 1848 when Gold was discovered by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California The Klondike Gold Rush, infrequently referred to as the Yukon Gold Rush or Alaska Gold Rush, was a frenzy of Gold rush Immigration to and forDapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic