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Join Stockhouse later this month as we size up how record-high gold prices and new technologies are re-invigorating fabled North American camps in Nevada, Yukon, Red Lake and more. Plus: the companies that are leading the charge to find new discoveries. This is a preview.
ELKO, Nevada – The money-making notion of going where many men (and women) have gone before is spreading.
Across Nevada and other North America gold jurisdictions that once dominated precious metals mining, hotels are running full and jobless rates are well below regional averages.
One guy gets most of the credit. Lunatic fringe was the label U.S.G.S. geologist Ralph J. Roberts received 51 years ago, all for suggesting panned-out north-central Nevada held gold lodes of unimaginable length, depth and grade.
Dr. Roberts, revered “father of the Carlin Trend,” passed away in 2007 at age 96. His discovery models, genetic and tectonic theories about sediment-hosted gold continue to fortify commercial Nevada prospectors searching for precious metals. (Photo: Ralph Roberts of U.S. Geological Survey)
Nevada labels itself the Silver State. “Its motto is Battle Born because of its vast silver production and resultant tax contributions to the Union just prior and during the U.S. Civil War,” says Nevada geologist and native Robert Carrington of Nevada’s General Metals Corp. (OTC:BB: GNMT, Stock Forum).
More than 400 million ounces of silver and 8.4 million ounces of gold have been produced from the state’s Comstock Lode alone. Yet mill recoveries were so poor in the 1800s and early 1900s, rarely more than 75 percent, that actual metal produced is a lot, lot more. “It went down the river in the tailings,” says Mr. Carrington.
Dr. Quinton Hennigh of Evolving Gold (TSX: T.EVG, Stock Forum) is confident one of a dozen or more prospectors will hit big. Evolving Gold is active in Nevada and Wyoming.
“When one considers there have been 200 million ounces of gold discovered on these trends to date, there is every reason to suspect there should be a lot more gold out there. It took Fronteer several years to take Long Canyon from discovery to buyout, but wow, what a deal. Don't you wish you were an AuEx Ventures shareholder, bump, then super bump,” Dr. Hennigh says.
Fronteer Gold (TSX: T.FRG, Stock Forum and FRG) purchased AuEx in November 2010. Denver-based Newmont Mining just closed its $2.3 billion purchase of Canada-based Fronteer.
Canada’s Barrick Gold (TSX: T.ABX, Stock Forum), the globe’s largest gold producer, and Newmont Mining (NYSE: NEM, Stock Forum), third largest, have Nevada to thank for their size. Nevada accounts for four-fifths of all U.S. gold output, and the good-old U.S. is the globe’s third-largest gold miner.
We’ll have much more later this month. Stockhouse members: Feel free to append names of Nevada prospectors and producers that are a piece of your rock. We cover several Nevada producers and prospectors in Ticker Trax. They include Gold Standard Ventures (TSX: V.GV, Stock Forum), Comstock Mining (OTC:BB: LODE, Stock Forum), Golden Phoenix Minerals (OTC: BB: GPXM, Stock Forum) and Great Basin Gold (TSX: T.GBG, Stock Forum). Of those, I own shares of GBG.
Thank-you’s to geologists David C. Mathewson, Carl Pescio, Robert Carrington, Walter Martin, Raul Madrid, Peter J. Hawley & Quinton Hennigh for their contributions to our upcoming Stockhouse report.
SKED: I plan to attend a Boca Raton, Florida, metals conference in late April. It is the Casey Research Conference. I am told the three-day confab already is sold out. I also am planning to see yet again diamond and gold properties in West Africa in May. That trip will take me, tentatively, to Mali, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. I expect sharp volatility in some of our West Africa research candidates in the next week or so.
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