Colorado Gold Production Summary

Except for only a few years, gold production in Colorado exceeded 100,000 ounces annually from 1860 through 1954. It gradually rose from 97,500 ounces in 1873 to about 201,000 ounces in 1890 (Henderson, 1926, p. 69). The Cripple Creek district boosted production to a peak of about 1,393,000 ounces in 1900 (fig. 11). Thereafter production declined at an uneven rate to about 213,700 ounces in 1929. When the price of gold was raised to $35 per ounce in 1934, production again rose to 380,000 ounces in 1941. It again declined abruptly when the mines were closed during World War II. After the war the annual gold output reached a maximum of about 150,000 ounces in 1947, but during 1954-65 it was below 100,000 ounces. Gold output reached a low of 33,605 ounces in 1963.

The mineral belt of Colorado trends obliquely to the mountain ranges and crosses the San Juan Mountains in the southwestern part of the State and the Sawatch, Mosquito, Gore-Tenmile, and Front Ranges in the central and north-central parts of the State. This belt is coincident with a belt of intrusive stocks, dikes, and sills of porphyritic acidic igneous rocks of Late Cretaceous or Tertiary age. Gold, silver, and lead-zinc ore deposits occur throughout this belt, in rocks of various types and ages. In the San Juan Mountains the deposits are chiefly in volcanic rocks of Tertiary age; in the Sawatch, Mosquito, and Gore-Tenmile Ranges they are in sedimentary rocks of Paleozoic age; and in the Front Range they are in the metamorphic and igneous rocks of Precambrian and Tertiary age. In Colorado, 44 districts—scattered in 24 counties— each have produced more than 10,000 ounces of gold.

Colorado Gold Production

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