Carlin Gold Trend Mine
Carlin, NV
October 9, 2024
It was completely missed during the Gold Rush. Fifty million years ago, in what is now northeastern Nevada, gold-rich fluids traveled through porous rock fissures and folds caused by a tectonic collision; miniscule particles of gold chemically bonded to arsenic-rich pyrite, making them invisible to the naked eye. Today, the Carlin Trend Gold Mine flies under the radar as one of the largest gold mining districts in the world. In its entirety, the Gold Rush produced around 12 million ounces of gold- Carlin Trend has produced over 100 million.
“It’s a pretty magical place.” Economic geologist Joe Becker stood at a strikingly tall 6’7 and spoke at a rapid pace. In a small conference room, he outlined the many steps carried out by the 7,800 employees: modeling, long-term planning, geometallurgy, evaluation and strategy, ore control, and reconciliation. In a historically challenging industry, Carlin trend is seeking to change the culture of mining. This includes cultivating what they called the “mining ecosystem,” which includes investing in surrounding communities and providing mental health support for their employees.
We drove to a point that offered a panoramic view of one section of the mining operation; an unrecognizable landscape stretched for miles, composed of man-made craters, tailings piles, terraced pits and an industrial district at the center. Trucks moved around on the temporary roads, spraying piles to prevent harmful dust carrying away on the wind. From above, the operation looked like a miniature toy set in a sandbox. However, this is no game: the scale of operation was a sobering reminder of the capacity of humans to alter a landscape on a massive scale. When asked what the area would look like after they finished mining, Joe pointed at distant hills covered in sage brush, where the land has been reclaimed and re-contoured. The one thing they can’t do much about is their large open pits, which he says will turn into lakes. Actually, they’ve seen birds nest along high walls of open pits: “we’re unintentionally creating new habitat.”
In one of the recently mined pits, Joe and the others let us search the massive rock piles, helping us find ones with sulfur or pyrite composition that likely contained gold. To our excitement, we were allowed to keep them- although there was no chance we could get out the gold without their equipment, laughed Joe. “This is a business of scale,” he reminded us. It would take 220 truckloads of these rocks to produce a single bar of gold. For the last part of the day, we toured the industrial complex where the ore is processed depending on its chemical composition with high amounts of heat, oxygen, pressure, and- surprisingly- coconut shells, rich in carbon. “Either mother nature does it over millions of years for us, or we do it in a matter of… hours.”
At the end of the day, Joe repeated his most frequent message; “if it can’t be grown, it is mined.” He acknowledged that resource extraction is a destructive industry, but he gestured at our synthetic shirts, iPhones, and metal zippers, pointing out that mined materials are “the glue that holds everything together around us.” He also mentioned copper and lithium in electric vehicles, adding that “if you believe in the green economy, you absolutely believe in mining.” During our long day at the Carlin Trend, we saw what the essential and improving- though inherently destructive- mining industry looks like in the modern United States.
by Alice O’Brien