History of the Modern Gold Rush in Nevada

It is early in the 1960s. The sun is rising on one of the greatest gold rushes in history.
There are faint reddish clouds on the horizon foretelling of the amazing discoveries
yet to come. The clouds represent nascent deposits such as Getchell in the Osgood
Mountains, Gold Acres in the Cortez District, and upstarts like Blue Star and Bootstrap
in the Lynn District of Eureka County. A few geologists seem to see the future.
They include John Livermore and J. Alan Coope, with Newmont, who advance gold
exploration based on the Ralph Roberts paper describing the alignment of mining
districts in north-central Nevada, and therefore focus their efforts on an area north
of Carlin, Nevada. The Carlin deposit is discovered in 1962, and this is considered
the birth of the modern gold rush in Nevada. Yet, despite this momentous discovery,
there is little additional activity until the Bretton Woods Monetary Agreement was
terminated in the early 1970s essentially deregulating the price of gold and silver.
Slowly, the Nevada exploration community reacts to rising precious metals prices in
the 1970s with resumed activity at the established disseminated gold districts such as
Cortez and Getchell, and more aggressive exploration on the developing Carlin area.
As the 1970s advance, the gold price rapidly rises, exploration activity increases,
mainly in the known historic mining camps and around old producers such as Round
Mountain and Battle Mountain, which are destined to become large producers in
time. Many old districts prove to have further life with a higher commodity price and
modern technology, leading to the development of important resources.
By the end of the 1970s, the gold price peaks, and there is an immediate reaction
in the exploration industry to its increase. The Iranian hostage crisis, Arab oil
embargo, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Carter-era high inflation rates drive
gold upward into unheard of prices as investors head to the yellow metal as a hedge
against growing economic and political uncertainty. Gold hits a then all-time high of
$850 per ounce in January 1980, and the race for more gold is on!
The industry, particularly Newmont, following up on research by the U.S. Bureau
of Mines, pioneers bulk cyanide heap leaching, which allows lower-grade ores
to be developed and processed. The timing could not be better as there exists a small
army of well-trained, motivated and resilient exploration geologists, fresh off the uranium
boom of the 1970s and the end of the porphyry copper boom of the late 1960s
and 1970s. These geologists were trained and mentored by an amazing generation of
individuals responsible for discovering and developing decades of resources that built
the US into a world leader. In Nevada, a perfect storm was brewing that consisted
of extraordinary mineral potential, committed explorers, financial backing, and new
technology.
The modern Nevada gold rush took off in the late 1970s with the development
of old districts and old mines but exploration rapidly headed into areas of cover including the pediment environment, post-mineral cover, and unmineralized or weakly
anomalous pre-mineral cover; conceptual ideas for targeting were also pursued. Some
of the largest and most significant discoveries were made by implementing these practices
on the Cortez, Carlin, and Getchell Trends, as well as in other areas of Nevada.
Drilling technologies (e.g., reverse-circulation) improved considerably over time and
allowed for less contamination, faster and improved assessment, and deeper testing of
areas previously considered uneconomic for development. New, commercially available
geochemical techniques allowed for cheap, rapid, and accurate determination of
not only metals of interest in hydrothermal systems, but associated, more dispersed
elements useful as vectors to ores.
This paper chronicles, in decadal intervals, the Nevada gold rush, a time of unprecedented
exploration discovery and mine development. As part of this study, the
discovery histories of 355 precious-metal deposits were reviewed. The rush began
slowly and unremarkably through the 1960s and 1970s, then grew into the wild ride
of the 1980s propelled by the order-of-magnitude rise in the gold price, which was followed
by the more disciplined but significant wave of discovery in the 1990s that led
to peak production and reserves. The story continues today, although discoveries are
fewer and production has eased as more and more mines transition to underground
operations and also from oxide ore to more expensive processing of refractory ore. We
examine some of the key factors that shaped the Nevada gold boom through time and
offer ideas on where the boom may go.
Key Words: Nevada, gold rush, gold boom, discovery history, Carlin-type, epithermal