Gold Country (also Mother Lode Country) is a region of northeastern California famed for the mines and mineral deposits which so famously brought the '49ers west for the California Gold Rush. Gold Country is generally thought to lie north of Yosemite, west of the Sierra Nevada and within nine of California's counties: Amador, Butte, Calaveras, El Dorado, Mariposa, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento and Tuolumne. In general, the region lies along California State Highway 49 between the north fork of the Yuba River and the middle fork of the Cosumnes River.