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While the term "mother load" has spawned many a pun, not to mention a band name or two, you're probably referring to its homophone, "mother lode." A lode is a metallic vein, especially of silver or gold, that fills a fissure in a rock formation. The word "mother" is used in an adjectival sense, as in relating to something's source or origin. Thus, "mother lode" was originally a prospecting or mining term, referring to the area
where gold is "trapped inside of veins of quartz on mountainsides." The mother of mother lodes was a vast area in Central California, east of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and west of the Sierra Nevada, now called Mother Lode Country. When James Marshall discovered gold there (in Coloma) in 1848, it precipitated the California Gold Rush (which, more immediately relevant for some, led to the nickname of San Francisco's football franchise). Today, "mother lode" is used mostly in a figurative sense, to describe an "abundant or rich
source" of just about anything, as in the following sentence: "We found the mother lode of kitty pictures on Yahoo!" As to who, exactly, coined the phrase, we don't know. But we did find translations of the term in several different languages on answers.com.
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