Meadow Lake: Gold TownThe inhabitants of Meadow Lake, California, dreamed as big as all the gold seekers of the far West, certain that their town, their mine was the big bonanza a place of legendary wealth that most prospectors believed really existed somewhere. The dream took shape in 1865 when the Meadow Lake region of eastern California became the scene of one of the most feverish stampedes in the history of prospecting. Reports of gold filled ledges five miles long