sentences:  Post-war gold production never reached the peak of the early 1940s, as inflation and the fixed price of gold eroded its value.The largest gold-mining district in California is the famous "Mother Lode" of the Sierra Nevada.Found in the early 1850s, the lode is a zone one to four miles wide and running 120 miles northwest-southeast from El Dorado County in the north, through Amador, Calaveras, and Tuolumne counties, to Mariposa County in the south.