William Hollingsworth age 8. of Mountain Home~ Idaho., for his question:

What is the Mother Lode?

The word lode comes to us from one of the old languages that helped to make modern English. It meant a road or a journey. It still has that meaning. Polaris is a lode star that points out the north direction and shows us the road home. Lode also means a special road between underground rocks. This is usually a wandering roads a crevice filled with metal of some kind.

Metals tend to collect in the crevices between rocks. The metal lode may run this way and that, It may be joined by many smaller lodes. The precious metal may run through the ground in a network of veins. Perhaps that is why these lodes are also called veins of metal.

The mother lode is naturally the chief vein in a valuable network of metal. Almost every mining area has its mother lode, But the real Mother Lode, spelled with capitals started a gold rush. People came to seek it from all over the world. The sensible ones stayed to populate the beautiful Golden State of California in which it was found,