US Gold Production by State: The 2025-26 Rankings

Reviewed September 2026 against USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries and Statista/CEIC production data.

Nevada produces more gold than every other US state combined, and has for decades. The US mined roughly 160,000 kg (about 5.1 million troy ounces) of gold in 2025, down from 163,000 kg in 2024 and 170,000 kg in 2023, according to CEIC Data and USGS. Nevada alone accounted for an estimated 3.5 million ounces of that 2024 total, with Alaska a distant second at 850,000 ounces — figures that explain why “US gold production by state” is really a story about one state and everyone else.

This article breaks down which states actually produce gold, how much, by what method, and how to pull the next official update yourself rather than rely on a number that ages out.

“Nevada’s Carlin Trend has produced more than 100 million ounces of gold over its mining history — more than the Witwatersrand basin’s early-era output per ounce mined, by Nevada Mining Association’s own count.”

National Production: The Numbers

US total gold mine production was approximately 160,000 kg in 2025 and 163,000 kg in 2024, per CEIC Data and Statista compilations of USGS series (CEIC Data). The prior year, 2023, came in at 170,000 kg according to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024 (USGS), which also placed the estimated value of that year’s US mine output at $10 billion. That three-year run — 170,000 kg, then 163,000 kg, then 160,000 kg — is a gradual decline, not a collapse, and it tracks aging operations at legacy Nevada mines more than any single policy or price shock.

Converting to more familiar units: 160,000 kg is roughly 5.14 million troy ounces. At the September 30, 2026 spot price of $4,177 per troy ounce (Trading Economics), that volume of metal would be worth over $21 billion at today’s price — more than double the $10 billion the USGS attached to the smaller 2023 volume, because the price has moved so much more than the tonnage has.

Key Insight
US gold production by state is a geology story before it’s a policy story. Nevada’s share isn’t a regulatory accident — it sits on the Carlin Trend, a belt of disseminated, sediment-hosted gold deposits with few global analogues. No other US state has found an equivalent orebody at that scale.

US Position in Global Gold Output

The United States remains a top-five global gold producer, though its share of world output has been gradually ceded to China, Russia, Australia and Canada as those countries bring new mines online. US annual production fell from 170,000 kg in 2023 to 160,000 kg in 2025 — a roughly 6% decline over two years, per the CEIC/USGS series cited above. That’s a maturing-district trend: the Carlin Trend and Nevada’s other major belts have been mined intensively since the 1960s, and per-tonne ore grades decline as the easiest ounces come out first.

Gold’s role in the US economy extends past jewelry and investment demand. It’s a direct input to electronics manufacturing, aerospace connectors and defense-grade components, which is why domestic supply figures get tracked by the same USGS mineral-security apparatus that monitors lithium, cobalt and rare earths.

Investor Note
A falling national total alongside a rising gold price is a specific setup: it means fewer new ounces are being found or brought into production even as the economics to do so improve. That gap is where exploration capital — and exploration technology — goes looking.

State-by-State Production Rankings

The clearest published state-level breakdown comes from Statista’s compilation of USGS data, which covers the 2023–2025 window (Statista). Two states have solid, citable figures for 2024: Nevada at 3.5 million ounces and Alaska at 850,000 ounces. For the remaining top producers — Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Arizona and Montana — Statista and USGS publish state rankings but the research available for this article did not include their exact 2024/2025 tonnage; rather than invent numbers for them, the table below states plainly which figures are sourced and which require a direct pull from the source.

State	2024 Production	Source Status	Primary Method	How to Get the Current Figure
Nevada	3,500,000 oz	Cited: Statista/USGS	Heap leach, underground, carbonate-replacement open pit	Statista state series; Nevada Division of Minerals annual report
Alaska	850,000 oz	Cited: Statista/USGS	Placer, hard-rock underground and open pit	Statista state series; Alaska Dept. of Natural Resources
Utah	Not in this brief	Requires direct pull	Large-scale open-pit (by-product of copper mining)	USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, state-level table
Colorado	Not in this brief	Requires direct pull	Underground, reworked historic districts	USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, state-level table
South Dakota	Not in this brief	Requires direct pull	Underground (Black Hills)	USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, state-level table
Arizona / Montana	Not in this brief	Requires direct pull	By-product of copper mining; placer	USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, state-level table

That gap in the table is deliberate, not an oversight: USGS publishes a full state-by-state table in each Mineral Commodity Summaries release, but the specific tonnage figures for Colorado, Utah, South Dakota, Arizona and Montana were not part of the verified research for this piece. If you need those numbers for a report or investment memo, pull the current-year PDF directly from USGS — the state table is usually two pages into the gold chapter — or check Statista’s same series, which layers in the years USGS hasn’t yet finalized.

Nevada: The Carlin Trend Engine

Nevada’s dominance traces to one geological feature: the Carlin Trend, a roughly 5-mile-wide, 40-mile-long belt of sediment-hosted, disseminated gold deposits running northwest from Elko. Per the Nevada Mining Association, the Carlin Trend has produced a cumulative 100 million ounces of gold since mining began there, which the association describes as making it one of the most productive gold districts in world history (Nevada Mining Association). That lifetime figure — 100 million ounces — is roughly 20 times Nevada’s entire annual output in 2024.

Major operating complexes on the trend include Nevada Gold Mines’ Goldstrike and Cortez operations (a joint venture between Barrick and Newmont), which combine large, low-grade disseminated ore with heap leaching and mill processing to run profitably at scale even as grades decline. The trend’s geology — gold hosted in carbonate rock rather than in visible quartz veins — is what made Nevada minable at industrial volumes in the first place; it’s largely invisible to the naked eye and was only fully unlocked once geochemical assay and later remote-sensing exploration caught up to the deposit type.

Lifetime output: 100 million ounces cumulative from the Carlin Trend (Nevada Mining Association)
2024 state total: 3.5 million ounces (Statista/USGS)
Dominant method: Heap leaching and mill processing of disseminated, sediment-hosted ore
Exploration frontier: Deeper, lower-grade extensions of known districts, increasingly targeted with remote sensing before drilling

Common Mistake
Treating “Nevada gold” as one uniform operation ignores that the Carlin Trend, Cortez district and Battle Mountain-Eureka trend are distinct geological systems with different ore chemistry, different processing routes, and different closure and reclamation timelines. A permitting delay or grade change in one district doesn’t tell you anything about the others.

Alaska: Remote but Rising

Alaska produced an estimated 850,000 ounces of gold in 2024, per the same Statista/USGS state series (Statista) — second nationally, and roughly a quarter of Nevada’s volume. Production splits between large hard-rock operations like Fort Knox near Fairbanks and Pogo near Delta Junction, and a long tail of smaller placer operations scattered across the state’s interior and southwest.

Alaska’s constraint isn’t geology, it’s logistics: many known gold-bearing districts sit hundreds of miles from road access, port infrastructure or grid power, which raises the capital cost of bringing a discovery into production even when the ore grade would be economic in Nevada or Utah. That’s part of why remote sensing and satellite-based targeting get disproportionate attention in Alaska specifically — narrowing a drill program before committing to a fly-in exploration camp changes the economics of exploration more in Alaska than almost anywhere else in the US.

2024 production: 850,000 oz (Statista/USGS)
Key operations: Fort Knox (Fairbanks), Pogo (Delta Junction), plus placer districts
Primary constraint: Infrastructure access and seasonal operating windows, not ore grade

Utah, Colorado, South Dakota and the Rest

Beyond Nevada and Alaska, the US gold map spreads across a handful of states with real but comparatively small output. None of these states’ exact current tonnage was part of the verified data for this article, so the descriptions below cover method and status rather than invented figures — check the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries state table for the exact current-year tonnage in each case.

Utah

Utah’s gold is mostly a by-product of large open-pit copper mining, where gold and silver are recovered alongside copper concentrate rather than mined as a standalone target. That co-product structure means Utah’s gold output moves with copper mine throughput and copper prices more than with gold prices specifically.

Colorado

Colorado’s modern gold production centers on reworking historic districts — most notably the area around Cripple Creek & Victor — using underground mining methods and modern processing on ore bodies that were uneconomic under 20th-century techniques and prices.

South Dakota

South Dakota’s gold history is dominated by the former Homestake Mine in the Black Hills, which operated for well over a century before closing; the site is now the Sanford Underground Research Facility. Current state production comes from smaller underground operations in the same district.

Arizona and Montana

Both states produce gold largely as a co-product of copper mining, similar to Utah’s pattern, plus smaller placer and legacy hard-rock operations.

Highlight
A meaningful share of “gold production by state” outside Nevada and Alaska isn’t primary gold mining at all — it’s copper, silver or molybdenum operations that recover gold as a co-product. That distinction matters if you’re modeling a state’s output against the gold price alone, since a copper-price swing can move that state’s gold volume more than gold itself does.

Satellite Intelligence in Gold Exploration

As US production volumes decline gradually in mature districts, new discoveries matter more, and the cost of finding them is the deciding factor in whether a deposit ever gets mined. Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection platform targets exactly that cost problem: it analyzes multispectral and hyperspectral Earth observation data to flag gold-bearing structural and alteration signatures before any ground crew or drill rig is mobilized.

For US operators, this changes exploration economics in two specific ways. First, in accessible districts like Nevada’s, it narrows which square miles of a large land package deserve a follow-up soil-sampling or IP-survey program, cutting the area under active field investigation. Second, in logistically hard districts like interior Alaska, it reduces the number of fly-in camps and helicopter-supported traverses needed to test a target, which is where a large share of early-stage exploration budget actually goes.

📍 Screen large land packages for gold-bearing alteration and structural targets before mobilizing crews
💸 Reduce exploration costs by up to 80–85% relative to ground-survey-first programs
🌎 Support minimal-disturbance exploration, with no ground impact until a target is validated
🚦 Compress early screening timelines from months to days
🛠 Prioritize drill budget toward the highest-probability targets identified remotely

Farmonaut’s Premium Mineral Intelligence Reports package high-resolution mineral heatmaps, estimated target depth, and geological structure analysis into formats that plug into a mining team’s existing GIS workflow. For teams ready to move from target identification to drill planning, the TargetMax™ Drilling Intelligence tier (Premium+) adds 3D subsurface modeling and drilling guidance. See an overview of what satellite-driven 3D prospectivity mapping looks like here.

Get a Quote for Your Gold Exploration Project

ESG Focus
Remote, no-ground-disturbance screening ahead of drilling is increasingly treated as a baseline expectation by ESG-focused investors, not a bonus — validating a target remotely before a single access road gets cut is the clearest way to show minimal-footprint exploration practice.

Gold Price Context and Why It Matters

Gold traded at $4,177 per troy ounce on September 30, 2026, according to Trading Economics’ commodity price tracker (Trading Economics). That price sits well above the level implied by the USGS’s $10 billion valuation of the 170,000 kg (5.47 million oz) produced in 2023 — back-calculating, that valuation implies an average 2023 price closer to $1,830/oz, meaning the spot price has more than doubled in under three years.

That price move is the main reason production economics have shifted even as physical output has declined. A US mine or prospect that was marginal at $1,800/oz gold can be comfortably profitable at $4,000+/oz, which is why previously subeconomic deposits in states like Colorado and South Dakota are being re-examined with modern processing methods. It’s also why exploration budgets — and demand for faster, cheaper target-generation tools — have grown even in a year when total US tonnage fell.

Investor Guidance
Don’t read a falling state or national tonnage figure as a falling-value signal on its own. Multiply tonnage by the current spot price before drawing a conclusion — on current figures, less gold produced in 2025 than 2023 is still worth far more at today’s price than 2023’s larger volume was worth at 2023’s price.

Calculator: Estimate a Deposit’s In-Ground Value

Use current spot gold and a deposit’s estimated ounces to see in-ground value at today’s price versus a price you specify for comparison — useful for sanity-checking a target before committing to a drill program.

Interactive

Run your own numbers

Estimated contained gold (troy ounces):

Gold price to use (USD per troy ounce):

Expected metallurgical recovery rate (%):

All-in sustaining cost (USD per ounce recovered):

Assumptions: this is a simple gross-to-net estimate using a flat recovery rate and a flat all-in sustaining cost figure you supply — it excludes royalties, taxes, financing costs, permitting timelines, and grade variability within a deposit. It is a screening tool, not a feasibility study.

How to Get the Next Official Number

Every figure in this article carries a publication date because every one of them will be superseded. Here’s exactly where the replacements come from:

National annual tonnage: USGS publishes updated Mineral Commodity Summaries annually, typically by spring, with preliminary current-year figures often available via the National Minerals Information Center (usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center) in late fall or early the following year.
Gold spot price: Updates daily on Kitco and Trading Economics; the World Gold Council publishes monthly averages if you need a smoothed figure instead of a single day’s print.
State-by-state breakdown: Statista updates its state series annually from USGS source data. Nevada and Alaska also publish their own state-level geological survey reports (Nevada Division of Minerals, Alaska Department of Natural Resources) on their own calendar or fiscal-year cycles, often ahead of the federal compilation.

If you’re modeling production for Colorado, Utah, South Dakota, Arizona or Montana specifically, go straight to the current-year USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries PDF’s state table — that’s the most complete public source for the smaller producing states, and it’s the same source Statista draws from.

Frequently Asked Questions: US Gold Production by State

Q: Which state produces the most gold in the US?

Nevada, by a wide margin. It produced an estimated 3.5 million ounces in 2024 against Alaska’s 850,000 ounces in second place, per Statista’s compilation of USGS data. Nevada’s Carlin Trend alone has produced 100 million cumulative ounces over its mining history, according to the Nevada Mining Association.

Q: What was total US gold production most recently?

160,000 kg in 2025, down from 163,000 kg in 2024 and 170,000 kg in 2023, per CEIC Data’s compilation of USGS series. Check the USGS National Minerals Information Center for the next annual update.

Q: How much is US gold mine output worth?

USGS valued the 2023 US gold mine output (170,000 kg) at approximately $10 billion. At the September 30, 2026 spot price of $4,177/oz (Trading Economics), an equivalent volume would be worth substantially more today — value tracks price as much as it tracks tonnage.

Q: Why is Nevada so dominant in US gold production?

Geology, not policy. Nevada sits on the Carlin Trend, a belt of large, disseminated, sediment-hosted gold deposits that support high-volume heap-leach and mill processing at a scale few other US districts can match.

Q: How do satellite tools change gold exploration economics?

Satellite-based mineral detection screens large areas for gold-bearing signatures before any ground crew mobilizes, which is especially valuable in logistically difficult states like Alaska, where fly-in field programs are the largest cost driver in early exploration.

Q: Is US gold production rising or falling?

Falling gradually in tonnage terms — 170,000 kg in 2023 to 160,000 kg in 2025 — as legacy Nevada and Alaska operations mature. Whether that trend continues depends on whether higher gold prices bring new deposits, like some in Colorado and South Dakota, into production.

Conclusion

US gold production by state comes down to one dominant fact and a long tail: Nevada produced an estimated 3.5 million ounces in 2024, Alaska 850,000 ounces, and the rest of the map — Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Arizona and Montana among them — splits a much smaller remainder, much of it as a by-product of copper mining. National output has eased from 170,000 kg in 2023 to 160,000 kg in 2025, even as the spot price has climbed to $4,177/oz as of September 30, 2026, which is why exploration interest hasn’t eased in step with tonnage.

The durable takeaway isn’t any single year’s figure — it’s the method: check USGS’s Mineral Commodity Summaries state table for the current tonnage by state, cross-reference Statista’s compiled series for trend, and price any volume against the day’s spot rate before judging whether output is rising or falling in value terms. For exploration teams acting on that outlook, Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection platform narrows the search before a single hole is drilled — get a project quote or contact the team to evaluate a target.

For deeper context on where this national picture is headed, see our companion piece on US gold production trends and uranium output, and for a case study in how a major deposit winds down responsibly, see the Homestake Mine’s current status and restoration lessons.