Carlin Trend

The Carlin Trend is North America's most prolific gold producing area, situated in north-central Nevada near Elko. It is a 64 km (40 miles) north-west/south-east strip of low grade, epithermal deposits of ore, first located in 1961 by Newmont Mining geologists John Livermore and Alan Cope. Scarcely 25 metres (80 feet) down, they got assays of 6.2g/t (0.2 oz). The gold was microscopic; the largest specks were 0.0005 centimetres (0.0002 inches) and had to be magnified 1,800 times before they could be photographed.

Newmont Gold's opencast Gold Quarry on the Carlin Trend
in Nevada (Credit: Timothy Green)

The first Carlin open-pit started in 1965, but not until the 1980s with higher gold prices and the new technologies of heap leaching, and later bio-leaching, was the Carlin Trend fully exploited.

In 2001 Newmont's complex of pits along the Trend produced 84 tonnes (2.7 million oz), while Barrick Gold's Betze-Post open pits and underground Meikle mine added 70 tonnes (2.3 million oz), accounting for 46% of all US gold output.