Nevada,
"The Silver State", is the third-largest producer
of gold in the world. Following only Australia and South Africa
in gold production, Nevada's year-2000 production of 8.6 million
troy ounces of refined gold left this one US state by itself
rivaling the 9.5 million troy ounces of gold produced from
the entire continent of Australia.
The Great Basin metalogenic province, which includes most of northern Nevada, produces nearly three-quarters of the total gold production of the United States, and some 11% of the world's total annual gold production. Yet while the Great Basin represents a profoundly rich mineral resource estimated at as much as 120 million troy ounces of gold, a great deal of this is widely disseminated in Carlin-type systems hosted in sedimentary rock, dominated by "invisible gold" present as ions or submicron-sized particles in iron sulfide. So, paradoxically, while these deposits represent truly
world-class economic deposits, they are far less likely to be recognized by the avocational prospector than the lode gold and placer deposits of Nevada legend.
That being said, both tales and realizations of native gold discovered in outcrops such as the legendary Esmeralda Vein, and their consequent placer deposits throughout the state of Nevada, are nevertheless nearly countless.
The tales presented here are classic examples of "misplaced" native/lode gold and placer deposits which will be as readily evident to the modern prospector as they were to nineteeth-century explorers and prospectors.
A
General History of Nevada
