Mother Lode
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mother Lode is a term associated with the mining of gold and refers to a principal vein or zone of veins of gold ore.
The typical first finds that start a "gold rush" are in streambeds. Knowledgeable miners in the past followed the occurrence of gold in rivers upstream to discover its source in the bedrock. This source was the "mother" of the gold in the river and so was dubbed the "Mother Lode".
The term is also used metaphorically to refer to the origin of something valuable.
