THE NEW GOLD RUSH

Gold prices have soared amid global uncertainty and a central-bank-driven buying spree. But this time, the gold mining industry looks very different.

- Will Daniel and Dylan Sloan

MOTHER LODE Left: Molten gold is poured into bar molds at the Cortez refinery. Right: A hauler truck at NGM's Cortez pit.

SOME 1,350 FEET deep and two miles across at its widest point, the Cortez open-pit gold mine outside Elko, Nev., looks like an asteroid crater-the largest hole in the ground you've ever seen. Standing at its edge, you can watch a constant stream of 24-foot-tall hauler trucks make the roughly hour-long trip into the abyss to collect pay dirt.

You'd need a ladder to climb into the cab of one of these monsters, which weigh over a million pounds each, and stop their steady crawl only to switch drivers, fill their 1,200-gallon tanks with diesel, or load up 370-ton payloads of gold ore. From up here, perspective tends to warp: Townhouse-size trucks begin to look like ants as they descend, and their operators entirely slip from view.

Off in the distance, you can make out a few of the 21 other mines in DIG DEEP NGM's underground mines are made up of tunnels and shafts as deep as 2,000 feet below ground level this complex in the desolate high desert. Nevada Gold Mines-a joint venture between the world's largest gold mining companies, Barrick Gold and Newmont Corp.-is the most productive gold mining operation on earth.

The microscopic gold dust in those 370-ton truckloads of dirt can't be seen with the naked eye, but after the entire pile has gone through the latest high-heat, pressure, and chemical processes, one load will on average yield about 10 ounces of gold-approximately the weight of a roll of quarters. That's a lower yield than some other mines, but it's consistent: When you have dozens of trucks servicing 22 mine sites 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the rolls of quarters add up-to the tune of nearly 85 tonnes of gold, worth $8 billion, last year. NGM edged out sites in Uzbekistan and Siberia for the title of world's most productive gold mining site in 2023.