Newmont owns or controls approximately 3,056 square miles (7,915 square kilometers) of land in Nevada, stretching across the state along the Interstate 80 corridor. All of the mines are located within a 100-mile (161 kilometer) stretch of north central Nevada between Carlin on the east and Winnemucca on the west, and within 50 miles (80 kilometers) north and 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of I-80.
Eastern Nevada
At the heart of Newmont’s Nevada operations is the Carlin mine. The mine’s origins date back to 1961, when geologists began probing the high desert area around the Tuscarora Mountains in search of finely disseminated gold. By the summer of 1963, drilling had identified a 3-million-ounce deposit, sufficient to justify a mine, even at the prevailing gold price of $35 an ounce. Newmont’s first open pit mine and oxide mill began production in 1965.
As additional gold was discovered and new mines opened, the faulted terrain running northwest to southeast from the town of Carlin became known as the Carlin Trend, a 50-mile (80 kilometer) long, 5-mile (8 kilometer) wide belt that contains more than 20 major gold deposits and is the most prolific goldfield in the Western Hemisphere. Newmont’s Carlin Trend operations include several surface and underground mines that supply ore to a variety of Nevada processing facilities.
Most of the 1,600 employees reside in Elko, Spring Creek and Carlin, where Newmont is the largest private employer.
Twin Creeks, Lone Tree and Phoenix
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| Above: Twin Creeks ore haulage at sunrise |
Newmont acquired Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corporation in 1997, adding Twin Creeks, Lone Tree and several satellite deposits near Winnemucca to the portfolio. In 2001, Newmont acquired Battle Mountain Gold Company, giving Newmont ownership of the Phoenix property, south of the town of Battle Mountain, where historic mining has left a halo of lower-grade gold and copper reserves. Gold and copper production began at Phoenix in 2006. Newmont’s 2002 acquisitions of Franco-Nevada Mining Corp. and Normandy Mining Ltd. added the remote Midas underground mine to the Nevada mine portfolio.
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| Above: Blasting activities, Gold Quarry South Layback, Nevada operations. | Above: Twin Creek’s Mega pit, surface exploration program. |
Midas
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| Above: Carline roaster,
Nevada |
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| Above: Midas processing facilities, Nevada |
The Midas mine was acquired in the Normandy Mining acquisition in February 2002 . The remote mine site includes a conventional milling circuit with a Merrill-Crowe zinc precipitation circuit. All gold and silver refining is completed on site at Midas as well.
Processing Flexibility and Gold Medal Performance are Keys to Nevada Success - Newmont operates its Nevada properties as an integrated unit. Together, the Nevada Operations boast the widest variety of processing methods of any gold mining complex in the world. Fourteen active processing facilities, ranging from autoclaves and a roaster to flotation cells and heap leaching, allow Newmont to maximize the economic recovery of gold from a wide variety of ore types and grades. A linear program helps direct the movement of ore to the processing plant that offers the highest economic return. This flexibility is vital to unlocking value in Nevada as the proportion of harder-to-process refractory ore increases and easily recoverable oxide leach ounces decline.
Employee participation in a wide variety of improvement initiatives generates innovative solutions that increase productivity, mill recovery rates and control production costs.
Above: Gold Quarry site infrastructure map
Above: Twin Creeks site infrastructure map, showing the Mega Pit that combined the former Chimney Creek and Rabbit Creek mines.
