In the United States, Gold has been found and documented in 38 of the 50 states (Figure 7). Large scale commercial, corporate mining gold deposits have been found in about half of these states, but in the other half the amounts of gold recovered are on a scale that would appeal more to the small-budget prospector. A few tens or hundreds of ounces of gold can’t justify an investment of millions of dollars in corporate mining startup costs, but at $1000+ per ounce these gold deposits would interest the small-budget prospector! The states in which gold recovery has been documented includes: Alabama, Alaska (and here, here), Arizona (and here), California (and here), Colorado (and here), Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri (and here), Montana, Nevada (and here, here), New Hampshire, New Mexico (and here), North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon (and here), Pennsylvania (and here), South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee (and here), Texas, Utah (and here), Vermont, Virginia (and here, here), Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin (and here), and Wyoming. No matter where a person lives in the continental US, they are within a day’s drive of a state documented to hold gold!
NOTE: Each state name in the previous paragraph is associated with a link to a webpage documenting an example where gold has been found in each state. Click on the link to open the webpage.
For states that have recorded smaller quantities of gold recovered, the sources of gold have sometimes been attributed to outwash from glacial sediments deposited during a previous ice age. Some geologists will disparage placer deposits derived from glacial sediments as “poor” sources for placer gold, but make no mistake: the depositional processes that result in placers out west are the same ones concentrating gold deposits in the north-central portions of the US. And just like the gold streams in the Western US, in these Central and Eastern region states some gravel bars show no gold, some show a trace, and some have rich deposits. The prospecting game is the same everywhere: systematic searching and persistence will yield results. And go first where gold has been found in the past.
Figure 8 Estimates by the U.S.G.S. of the numbers of tons of undiscovered gold in the United States{11}
Figure 9 Map of the lower 48 States with gold assessment regions, and estimated undiscovered gold in tons listed {12}
Figure 8 is a table listing the average estimate of undiscovered gold resources for different areas in the United States. NOTE: These are very conservative estimates. The true quantities of undiscovered gold are certain to exceed these estimates, possibly by a large amount! Figure 9 is a map of the assessment areas that the values in the table of Figure 8 refer to. For example, The “Pacific Coast” region is listed in Figure 8 to have an estimated 2,100 tons of undiscovered gold. On the map of Figure 9, the gold assessment area labeled “Pacific Coast” includes parts of the states of California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The U.S. Geological Survey’s estimate for undiscovered gold for each region is posted in red text below each region title. These average estimates were derived from the cumulative probability distributions of the contained metals for each area or of the total area. “NM” means “No Metal” concentration of sufficient size and grade richness that it might, under the most favorable of circumstances, be considered to have potential for development at the corporate scale.{13}
NOTE: Many of the states listed in regions marked “NM” (No Metal) have documented gold finds, and links to that documentation are included in this eBook so that the reader can easily prove to themselves that gold is available in those states. These states were likely categorized as having “No Metal” by the U.S. Geological Survey because the estimated gold available was less than what is needed for “corporate scale” development. Of course if these USGS undiscovered gold estimates were published before 1960, they would not have included the millions of produced gold, reserves, and known gold reserves of the Carlin Formation deposits in Nevada. So while the geologic research completed by the USGS is of the highest quality, it is subject to revision due to new data and the continued development of mining exploration technology. It is NOT the final word on the gold resources subject!
NOTE: Many of these northeastern states that have glacial outwash deposits ARE ALSO underlain by an ancient mountain range, the Penokean Orogeny, a mountain-building episode that occurred in the early Proterozoic about 1.85 to 1.84 billion years ago. Rich gold deposits are being developed just north of the United States, over the Canadian border in these geologic strata. Just as the massive gold deposits of the Nevada Carlin trend deposits were not officially identified until the early 1960’s, are similarly massive deposits of gold in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other northeastern states waiting to be found? Geologic and mining experts familiar with the region agree that there are! These gold deposits that are likely to underlie the northeastern United States are truly “the next big gold boom” waiting to be discovered!
States where there is no public record of gold having been found: Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Rhode Island. (NOTE: Almost all of these “no-gold” states have at least two states on their borders where gold has been found!) The title of this section is phrased as “no public record of gold having been found” because the overwhelming majority of successful private prospectors won’t announce to the public that they have located gold anywhere in the US. Small-budget prospectors may have recovered many 10’s to 100’s of ounces of gold in the 9 states listed above, but public disclosure of that information would probably never happen. After all, what’s more important? Bragging rights, or early retirement and a second house on a Bahamas beach? One thing’s for sure: as soon as there is a public announcement of a gold strike, the original finder of the gold will have a lot of company! All around the country individual prospectors are quietly meeting with their friends or family and spending weekends enjoying the outdoors, and also trying their hand at gold prospecting. And no public announcements of their success will ever be made!
Figure 10. A composite map showing some of the gold deposits that can be found in the lower 48 states taken from gold deposit maps published by the U.S. Geological Survey.{14}
Gold has been found in every region of the United States, in every geologic environment, and every physiographic region of the United States (East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest)(Figure 10). When an ounce of gold was worth $18.93 (1833), it took quite a bit of gold to make the hard work of prospecting worth the effort. But with the price per ounce of gold hitting values like $1209.60 (December 3, 2014) and $1900.30 (September 5, 2011), gold deposits that weren’t large enough for economic development in the past are suddenly many times more attractive now (approximately 63 to 100 times more attractive than in 1833!). And with the economically uncertain world economy, the price of gold could go way up. 2016 may be remembered as the year that gold prospectors took to the field with a vengeance. Are you ready to be remembered as a “Sixteen-er”?
