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Nevada Trend: Truly A Friend
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)
David C. Mathewson is one of those company prospectors and geologists. Mr. Mathewson is a rainmaker on the Carlin Trend, having notched his geologists’ belt years ago in the state’s Rain District. Now, Mr. Mathewson, having spearheaded Newmont Mining’s (NERM and NEM) Nevada ground-scrubbing for several years, has his hands full: expanding his new employer’s Railroad Gold Project just outside Elko, Nevada.
“I believe that in Nevada perhaps about 25 percent of what currently would comprise economic gold deposits has been discovered and at least partially defined to this point in time,” says Mr. Mathewson, VP of Exploration for Gold Standard Ventures (GV).
Doing the math on a state that already has produced 5,000 metric tons of gold in the past 150 years - you get the idea. Newmont Mining, which was first to profit enormously from the Carlin Trend, ranks as one of the largest gold miners in the world in large part because of its Nevada super-pits.
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 civil war,” says Nevada geologist and native Robert Carrington of Nevada’s General Metals Corp. (GNMT) and Colombian Mines (CMJ). “More than 400 million ounces of silver and 8.4 million ounces of gold have been produced from the state’s Comstock Lode alone. 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, but went down the river in the tailings.”
The money-making notion of going where many men (and women) have gone before is spreading. Across Nevada and other jurisdictions that once dominated precious metals mining. These include Colombia, until the 1940s South America’s No. 1 gold producer. The Yukon is in re-discovery mode. Parts of Ontario in Canada. Even the Republic of South Africa’s prolific and way-deep Witwatersrand Basin.
Nevada’s plain-Jane mining laws make the state one of the world’s friendliest places to mine. But what draws prospectors - students, working geologists, engineers and mineralogists - is the rock.
“Roughly two-thirds of the known mineral trends are covered or are down-dropped by faulting,” says Quinton Hennigh, a Colorado doctor of geology whose modeling theories have propelled Evolving Gold (EVG) in Nevada and Wyoming and Gold Canyon Resources (GCU) in Nevada into headline territory.
“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 (FRG and FRG) purchased AuEx in November 2010. Denver-based Newmont just closed its $2.3 billion purchase of Canada-based Fronteer.)
And so it go-eth. And go-eth. In the spun-out case of AuEx/Fronteer: Nevada-centric Pilot Gold (tentative ticker: PLG) will start trading Monday April 11 in Canada.
Dr. Hennigh, a professorial chap in his mid-40s, believes the most lucrative Nevada mining will occur underground. “You now see many mines, West Leeville, Cortez Hills, Turquoise Ridge, cranking out huge amounts of gold from rocks grading 0.3 to 0.5 grams per ton gold or thereabouts. They are going deeper; 2,000 ft seemed out of the question 20 years ago. Now, it is routine,” Dr. Hennigh says.
Carl Pescio, like Robert Carrington, hails from longstanding Nevada stock. The 57-something Mr. Pescio, his wife and family were the property holders whose land helped to shape Allied-Nevada (ANV and ANV), now a $3.4 billion company. Mr. Pescio is one of the largest individual owners of Gold Standard Ventures and rubs elbows frequently with that small company’s 65-year-old Dave Mathewson and its CEO, 35-something young-one Jonathan Adwe of Vancouver. (Photo: Mr. Mathewson and Mr. Adwe at Railroad Project - Thom Calandra photo)
“North central Nevada is the second largest and most concentrated gold endowment in the world,” says Mr. Pescio, a fit and tan man who lives, prospects and ranches near Elko, Nevada. “Complicated geologic settings along with extensive post-mineral cover make deposits very hard to find. I would think that 75 percent of the area is almost completely unexplored because of that cover. So geologic complications around historic discoveries will allow those (potential resources) to increase greatly.
The sense of discovery in Nevada is happening all over again. The jobless rates in Elko and thereabouts are low and hotel occupancies are high. See: Elko’s Gold Standard.
“In many cases, today’s new gold mines were geochemical anomalies less than 10 years ago,” says Mr. Carrington, a firearms aficionado and hunter whose great-great grandfather, Francis Bell, was one of two telegraphers who transmitted the state’s new constitution to Washington, D.C., in 1864.
“What makes Nevada so favourable geologically is the abundance of very favourable host rocks, favourable structural settings, high heat flow due largely to the fact the earth’s crust in Nevada is just about the thinnest on earth. And that all gives rise to the abundance of intrusive rocks which are the heat engines that drive the mineral systems,” says Mr. Carrington, who is in his mid-50s.
The now-Newmont project in the north eastern Nevada’s Pequop Mountain Range “proves there are still new deposits to be found out there,” says Mr. Carrington, a graduate of the Mackey School of Mines in Reno. The Midway-Barrick (ABX) Spring Valley venture looks like an intrusive-related, some say porphyry related, system. “Newmont is going great guns on its Sandman project near Winnemucca, too,” he says.
Canada’s Barrick Gold, the globe’s largest gold producer, and Newmont, third largest, have Nevada to thank for their size.
Nevada accounts for four-fifths of all USA gold output, and the good-old USA is the globe’s third largest gold miner.
BISON GOLD - is a Canadian public company focused on exploring for high grade gold with property assets in Manitoba.
