Gold (13.10g)

specimen number:
2262192

location:
Mariposa Co., California, USA

description:

Bright crystallized native gold coming off quartz. Complete all around and in good condition. This has a total weight of 13.1 g. The specimen comes with an antique data card as shown at the end of the video giving an acquisition date of October, 1970.

Mariposa County, situated at the southern terminus of California's famous Mother Lode belt, is a legendary locality for the extraction of both placer and lode gold. Geologically, the region is characterized by the Mariposa Formation, a Jurassic-age sequence of slate, metasedimentary, and metavolcanic rocks that were intensely deformed and intruded by hydrothermal fluids related to the Sierra Nevada Batholith. These fluids deposited native gold within massive, fault-controlled quartz veins, where it occurs as bright yellow sheets, wires, and highly coveted arborescent crystalline aggregates, often associated with pyrite and arsenopyrite. Historically, the California Gold Rush was ignited in Mariposa County when John C. Fremont discovered rich gold-bearing quartz veins on his Las Mariposas estate in 1849, leading to the rapid development of iconic underground mines like the Mariposa, Princeton, and Pine Tree-Josephine mines. Large-scale mining and surface quarrying thrived from the 1850s until World War II, when federal Limitation Order L-208 halted non-essential gold mining in 1942, though intermittent small-scale prospecting and specimen corporate mining have continued through 2026.

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