California - Mother Lode County

Mother Lode County describes the region from Mariposa in the south, near the western entrance to Yosemite National Park, as far as Georgetown, some 10mi/16km north of Coloma, where the first gold was discovered in 1848. It is about 120mi/192km long and its width varies from a few hundred meters up to 2mi/3.2km. Mother Lode County probably did not receive its name until 20 years after the discovery of rich deposits of gold-quartz. It was wrongly assumed that there were only a few quartz veins containing gold. In fact, however, there were other important mines north of so-called Mother Lode. You can drive to that area along the CA 49, passing uninhabited ghost-towns, once flourishing gold-mining townships.