Gold is mainly found as the pure native metal. Silvanite and calaverite are minerals that contain gold. Gold is usually found embedded in quartz veins or gravel from placer streams. It is mined in South Africa, USA.
UU. (Nevada, Alaska), Russia, Australia and Canada. Gold is most often found in quartz rock. When quartz is found in areas of gold bearings, it is possible that gold is also found.
Quartz can be found as small stones in river beds or in large veins on hillsides. The white color of quartz makes it easy to detect in many environments. As water moves away from the magma chamber, gold begins to crystallize within the fracture to produce a deposit of gold in the vein. The first major gold rush in the United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799, at the current Reed gold mine.
Approximately 29,000 troy ounces (900 kg) of gold were produced at the Ropes gold mine northeast of Ishpeming in Marquette County, Michigan. Some of the world's leading mining companies, including Newmont Mining, Barrick Gold and Kinross Gold, operate gold mines in the state. In 1848, James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill, Coloma, which started the California Gold Rush. The Reed gold mine, southwest of Georgeville in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, produced about 50,000 troy ounces (1600 kg) of gold from deposits of veins and pleasures.
Gold mining continued there until 1849, when the California gold rush attracted Mexican miners. Small amounts of gold were commercially mined in northeastern Florida in the late 19th century, on the site where today Mike Roess Gold Head Branch State Park is located. Manuel López, a Spanish priest, reportedly started gold mining in Arizona in 1774 when he had native Indians of the Papago tribe wash gold from gravel in the Quijotoa Mountains of Pima County. This gold rush is immortalized in Jack London's novels and Charlie Chaplin's film The Gold Rush.
North Carolina was the site of the first gold rush in the United States, following the discovery of a 17-pound (7.7 kg) gold nugget by 12-year-old Conrad Reed in a stream on his father's farm in 1799. Experienced gold diggers rarely search for gold, but rather look for rocks and rock formations that are known to hold gold. Currently, only Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company in Victor, near Colorado Springs, continues to produce gold. Gold was first discovered in Montana in 1852, but mining did not begin until 1862, when gold setters were discovered in Bannack, Montana, in 1862. The Barneys Canyon mine in Salt Lake County, the last primary gold mine to operate in Utah, stopped exploding in 2001, but is still recovering gold from its leach pad heap. Nevada, which is currently the top gold mining state in the U.S.
It is home to three of the world's top 10 gold mines and seven of the top 10 U.S. UU.
