The Mother Lode: A Geology

By Buzz Eggleston | Posted: Tuesday, July 7, 2015  / Calaveras Enterprise

A few years ago, about to retire as a newspaper editor, I immersed myself in a subject I had long been interested in, but knew little about – geology, especially the geology of the Mother Lode.

I started reading about geology, talking to geologists, Googling geology on the Internet, just trying to understand how this place came together. It was a challenge beyond anything I had undertaken for a long, long time. I had to discard so many things I thought I knew, question so many things that seemed so obvious but were, as it turned out, so wrong.

It was a long journey, but thanks to a few good people who patiently mentored me along, I think I came through it with an understanding of what this place is and how it came to be here. The result is a series of stories that will begin in this week’s Sierra Lodestar and also run as an occasional series in the Calaveras Enterprise.

The series will appear every other week in the magazine. It examines the fundamentals about geology in the Mother Lode and also how geology affected the history of this place and all who have lived and still live here and who eventually will live here. I’m no scientist. Journalism is more amateur sociology than anything else, so I sidetracked to look at how people made use of the geology once they discovered it. We’re a creative species, I found out.

The geology gave us an abundance of valuable resources to build our lives around: gold, of course, and building materials, rocks for walls, soil that grew timber and grasslands, even land well-suited to growing gardens and wine grapes. Humans have only been here a fraction of a second in geologic time, but we’ve wasted no time in harvesting all that the land has to offer.

Now it seems we are in a time of transition. The days of gold seeking are mostly past. We still harvest timber, but it is a mechanized industry providing fewer jobs than it once did. Cement, which once proudly bore the name Calaveras, is gone, too, a fading memory except for the few retired folks who recall how vibrant an industry it once was. Our resources are not so free for the picking as they were when miners first panned our rivers. Even our rivers aren’t altogether ours to profit from anymore.

We tried building an economy around building houses. That was briefly lucrative, more than once in our history, but it doesn’t seem too sustainable and in the longer run it doesn’t pay a community’s bills. People want to live here, but housing is an industry of booms and busts.

As I studied the geology of our area, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was trying to tell me about the future of the Mother Lode. Are there messages in the soil and rocks that point the way to what lies in store for us? Maybe.

The wine industry, now decades old, suggests that with hard work the soils here can still yield a living wage for some of us. I look around at that and see other examples that, even in times when the economy shreds many small businesses, people are making a livelihood off the land. I call it boutique agriculture. It serves locals, but it invites tourists, too.

I see success stories in the Outer Aisle operation in Murphys, where the folks work the land and bring fresh produce to our tables, and in Cover’s Apple Ranch near Tuolumne. I see it in the Red Apple up the hill on Highway 4, a wayside shop for bakery goods, honey, apple cider and more. And I see it in the Hilltop Market, a family-run operation just south of San Andreas that produces flowers and vegetables. Not far away is Metzger Farms, another family enterprise, which adds eggs and wines to their garden of products. There’s Nakagawa Ranch, just down the hill, which produces prized Wagyu beef, Hurst Ranch in Jamestown where you can buy grass-fed beef and other local products, and Swingle Meat Co. in Martell, which attracts consumers from all over the region. And there are others here who specialize in making olive oil, and still others who bring us natural honey produced by bees that feast on native foothill plants. There’s much more.

After studying geology of all things, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Mother Lode’s economic future largely rests with entrepreneurs who are not afraid to get their hands dirty. It would be worthwhile for us as a community to encourage our leaders, particularly political leaders, to adopt public policies that help incentivize boutique agricultural enterprise, not just here but everywhere.

Read the series of stories about to appear in the Calaveras Enterprise and Sierra Lodestar and see if you agree.

Buzz Eggleston is a former editor of the Calaveras Enterprise. Contact him at buzz.calent@gmail.com.