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Geology, Ancient History with a Modern Twist in the Mother Lode

Cutline: Many buildings in the Mother Lode, like this one in Volcano, were made of
limestone.

By Sarah Lunsford

Word count: 1,549

A drive through the Mother Lode reveals not only beautiful scenery and unique towns,
but also a little bit of the way it was knit together.
Quartz veins with their precious gold enticement drew droves of people to the area during
the Gold Rush, but those veins were just part of a larger picture that gives the Mother
Lode is landscape.
“There’s such rich geologic history in the area that it’s quite an exciting area to be in,”
said Russ Shoemaker, educator and owner of Stories and Stones.
At one time, most of the area was part of an inland sea much like the Great Barrier Reef
in Australia.
“All of this area, during past geologically, was under the sea,” said Shoemaker.
Visual remnants of that era are seen in the limestone that still exists.
“Anytime you see limestone is evidence of coral reefs,” said Eric Costa, gold exploration
geologist.
Marble, a form of limestone, outcroppings can be seen around Columbia and Murphys as
examples of what remains of those ancient coral reefs and where they were sutured onto
the western edge of North America, said Costa.
Later in time, continental plates meeting and overlapping coupled with volcanic activities
gave the region another interesting layer of formations both over and underground.
“The most interesting part of the Mother Lode is what you call a suture zone,” said Doug
Keaton, mining engineer.
This suture zone is the line where the plates collided then overlapped, from the East and
West, at the end of the era of the dinosaurs. Where the two met, structures were pushed
up and to the East that is why some vertical standing stones list in that direction.
“You have a series of little micro plates being attached the larger plate,” said Costa.
After these initial structures were eroded by time and elements, volcanoes erupted
showering the area with lava and ash that ran through then existing rivers, streams and
valleys, capping some structures with their deposits and artifacts underneath, such as
Table Mountain in Tuolumne County.
The Sierra Nevada’s are actually the youngest structures to be formed in this sequence of
events. It was their own erosion process that revealed its gold deposits in the new rivers
and streams, along with underground veins.
There was so much upheaval that the new Mokelumne River that is seen today is actually
1,500 feet lower in elevation and miles away from the original.
The collision point of the Mother Lode is found under Sutter Creek and Plymouth in
Amador County and is marked by a change in stone from the East to the West. On the
eastern side of the collision the dominant stone is greenstone while on the western side it
is slate.
The greenstone can be seen dotted around the Mother Lode sitting vertically in clusters
where is was pushed up on the sea floor in the form of pillow lava. The miners
nicknamed it “tombstone rock” because of its resemblance to cemeteries with their
tombstone grave markers.
The tombstone rock can be found in Amador County at Sutter Hill near the CDF station
there and neat the Italian Picnic grounds, as well as near the Calaveras County Airport.
“The greenstone, it’s a really, really hard rock,” said Keaton, which is an explanation of
how it ended up keeping its basic characteristics through all the geological turmoil that
surrounded it.
“It was in these cracks that the gold solution came up,” said Keaton. This gold solution
ultimately became the Mother Lode which years later would draw so many people to the
region.
Although the Mother Lode region is not bound by manmade boundary lines, running
from Mariposa County to the South up through Placer County to the North, it is defined
into three belts with the primary belt running parallel to Highway 49 from Plymouth to
Mariposa.
This main gold belt is associated with the Melones Fault zone that served as a plumbing
system for the gold solution that would become the main Mother Lode.
The West gold belt was around the Hodson and Salt Springs Valley regions in Calaveras
and minimally with regions of Amador and Tuolumne and was associated with the Bear
Mountain fault line.
The East gold belt is characterized with gold deposits associated with granite intrusions
and is located in the Sheep Ranch, Railroad Flat and West Point areas of Calaveras.
The Sutter Creek Gold Mine shows visitors the meeting point of two different gold
bearing quartz ore bodies, the Lincoln and the Comet.
“That’s an unbelievable cross section (of the gold formation),” said Costa about the
underground offerings at the Sutter Creek Gold Mine.
“(There’s an) intersection of major vein structures,” said Holly Boitano, environmental
protection and safety coordinator, Sutter Creek Gold Mine.
Those veins run vertically and horizontally.
“The majority of the (surrounding) rock is greenstone,” said Boitano as an explanation of
why the miners had a hard time getting through and taking out the gold.
Some of the most spectacular deposits of crystalline gold in the world can be found
around the gold mines of Sonora and Columbia, often referred to as pocket mines, said
Costa.
The largest crystalline gold specimen in the world can be found at Ironstone Vineyards
heritage museum in Murphys where the 44-pound specimen, discovered by the Sonora
Mining Company in 1992, can be viewed by visitors.
Gold wasn’t the only substance of value the early miners found, they often found a girls
best friend as well.
“They found diamonds along with the gold,” said Keaton.
Going further away from the epicenter of the collision of the Mother Lode found in
Amador County softer stone is found in the form of serpentine.
Many examples of serpentine, which is the official state rock of California, can be found
in the Mother Lode.
A good example of this is near New Melones Dam in Calaveras, as well as places where
natural terrain was cut for roads, such as the long straight away on Highway 49/12
driving from San Andreas to Jackson.
“The gold belt is marked with serpentine,” said Costa.
A mineral unique to the Mother Lode, Mariposite, a chromium mica, is associated with
the serpentine rock in the gold belt, said Costa.
The clay found in the Ione area of Amador is used in specialty clays used in to make
bricks and ceramics and shipped around the world.
This clay belt formed through volcanic and sedimentary process extends down into the
Valley Springs area of Calaveras, and is only found in four other U.S. locations, Castle
Rock, Washington; Whiteware, Montana, along with Hobart Butte and Mollala, Oregon.
The clay in the area is not the local substance with a worldwide market, the Calaveras
Cement Company located in San Andreas was known for producing the finest cement in
the world from local limestone combined with shale and silica before its closure in 1983.
It shipped cement that ended up in Pardee Dam and military bases such as Mare Island
and Travis Air Force Base.
Today another local limestone is popular more for its attractiveness than its utilitarianism.
Murphys stone, a metamorphosed limestone with quartz inclusions, is a favorite of those
who practice Suiseki, a form of Asian stone appreciation.
Geological formations are not the only visible traces of what has happened through the
years, there are plants that are typical of and unique to the Mother Lode region.
“There are lots and lots of examples of really rare plants,’ said Pat Stone, member of the
California Native Plant Society.
The geological make up of certain area determines what plants grow in that area with
some being unique because of a combination of factors including soil composition.
Two onions in particular are only found in the region. The Rawhide Hill Onion is only
found in five places in Tuolumne County and nowhere else in the world, while the
Yosemite Onion is found around granite in the Yosemite Valley.
The Tuolumne Fawn Lily is unique to that county growing only in granite soil and taking
its name from its county of origin.
“Serpentine, for most plants is poisonous,” said Stone.
One of the exceptions to this is the Chinese Camp brodiaea a member of the lily family is
grows in serpentine and volcanic soils and is found only in two places near the Chinese
Camp School in Tuolumne and one other location in Calaveras.
The volcanic clay around the Ione area in Amador County is home to two rare species.
“The ones (plants) in Amador are really rare,” said Stone. “Both the Ione Manzanita and
Irish Buckwheat, both only occur there.”
Plants found only in this area because of the geological make-up are not limited to
flowers and bushes, but include trees as well.
The Sequoia Gigantea, commonly known as the Giant Sequoia is only found in the
Western Sierra Nevada’s including Big Trees State Park in Calaveras County and grow in
granite based soils.
“Most of the special places we reserve for plants are special because of the geology,” said
Stone.
From rock formations, to veins of gold, to plants, the geological formation of the Mother
Lode has given everyone a taste of the past in the present, which is something one and all
can enjoy while taking time to enjoy the natural treasures the area has to offer.

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