Round Mountain, Nevada

Aerial photo of Round Mountain open pit, 2008. Dimensions of the pit are about 2,500 m × 1,500 m (8,200 ft × 4,900 ft). Mining benches (the "contour lines") are about 10.7 m (35 ft) high.[1]
Round Mountain gold mine, heap-leach pads, 2008

Round Mountain is an unincorporated town in Nye County, Nevada, United States.[2] The population of Round Mountain as of 2014 is 1,868.[3] The town's ZIP code is 89045.

Round Mountain is best known for the Round Mountain Gold Mine, a large open pit heap-leach gold mine owned by Kinross Gold Corporation. The first gold production from the Round Mountain District was in 1906, and by 2006 the mine had produced over 10 million ounces of gold, worth about US$9.5 billion at 2009 prices. Ore reserves and resources total about 1.8 million ounces of gold as of the end of 2007.[1] The gold occurs on the rim of an ancient collapsed caldera and is mainly fine-grained, with visible (and sometimes spectacular) gold occurring in structural intersections.[4]

While the original town of Round Mountain remains near the current mining operation, the construction of Hadley served, in essence, as a relocation of the former community. As such, and with the new town existing as of, by, and for Round Mountain Gold, the surrounding areas, including both towns (occasionally including the town of Carvers as well), are often generically referred to as Round Mountain.

  1. ^ a b Round Mountain, Kinross Gold Archived 25 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "Nye County Code - Chapter 2.18: Adoption of the Unincorporated Town Government Law". Sterling Codifiers. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  3. ^ "Round Mountain Public Library -- Smoky Valley Library District".
  4. ^ "SoCal Section Tours the Round Mountain Gold Mine", 2005