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Mother Lode Melting Pot
| Article
# : |
11116 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1986 |
6,008 Words |
| Author
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Ferol Egan
Ferol Egan is the author of such prize-winning books as
Fremont: Explorer For a Restless Nation; Sand in a Whirlwind:
The Paiute Indian War of 1860; and The El Dorado Trail: The
Story of the Gold Rush Routes Across Mexico. He has written
articles for many magazines, and is a fifth-generation Mother
Lode mix of many ethnic groups. |
California's Mother Lode country was Indian tribal territory at the beginning of 1848. Even before the discovery of gold, it was an up and down land that stretched some 120 miles by air, give or take an extra mile or more. But by following the up and down contour of the land, by dropping in and out of gulches and canyons on winding trails, the distance grew like a great snake crossing the land. And what could have been an easy journey became one that stretched about 250 up and down miles and took more than a few days to complete.
Not high in altitude, the Mother Lode ranges from just below 1,000 feet to just above 3,000 feet above sea level. It is a country cut through by such rivers as the Yuba, American, Cosumnes, Mokelumne, Calaveras, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and Merced. But these are the major rivers, and they have tributaries that are almost dry creeks in the summer, but run with a rush of wild, white water when the snow pack in the High Sierra melts during late spring and early summer.
Red clay soil marks the Mother Lode with its color. Below these Sierra Nevada foothills The rich solid of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys have the color of Sandy loam in some areas and the rich, black peat in the Delta country below Stockton. High above the Mother Lode is the land of granite that shines in the sunlight like great white whales breeching above the surface of an ocean of pines and firs.
In this land where rives have their beginning, where gold once washed down canyons to the red clay country, there are aspens, cottonwoods, dogwoods, sugar pines, ponderosas, firs, and junipers that cling to granite outcroppings and take all
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