This is the "mother lode."
The area of the circles on this map represent the gold production in millions with the largest, around Grass Valley, representing $300 million (Source: Atlas of California: Pacific Book Center, 1979).
Over millions and millions of years the stuff came up with the magma, cooling and crystallizing into veins in the quartz and other rock being thrust into the sky, riding the continental plate, then working loose with the weather, tumbling down the mountains and settling in the quieter pools of prehistoric rivers, the placers. Sometimes it was buried by Volcanic fallout from Mammoth and other nearby hotspots and sometimes it was exposed again by erosion.
The local Weimar Indians considered it bad luck and wouldn't touch it.
Then came the gold rush of 1849 and for years everyone in California walked around with their heads down, their eyes peeled for color. And I think they got every loose piece.
At least I never found any. I had to treat my fever by straining goldleaf out of Peppermint Schnappes and painting it on souvenir rocks cemented into the fishpond.
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