Toulumne County,
Mother Lode Counties

Tuolumne County is one of the Mother Lode counties, is in central California between Calaveras County on the north and Mariposa County on the south.

In the 1850's the prospectors of the gold rush and adventurers traveled all over the Mother Lode country. Before long they were able to find the gold placers of Tuolumne County, which turned into the richest in California. During 1850’s to the 1870’s this county was one of the most important gold producers in the state. At least $151,175,000 of placer gold was produced before 1899, generally from the Tertiary and Quaternary gravels in the Columbia Basin and the Table Mountain channel in the Jamestown-Sonora area.

Toulumne County has some very interesting and appealing places for the prospector since it has some of the richest placer deposits in the Mother Lode and a good number of big sized nuggets have been found in this area.

Moccasin Creek which his south of the junction of Highways 49 and 120 is an interesting place for prospectors these days as well. if you are interested in going to this place, make sure to check the rocks that line the creek in this area. These rocks were stacked by hand and there are paths between the piles. Although this is an area that has already been prospected you may just get lucky, obviously the best is to find an area that has not been explored yet but that is up to each individual prospector.