That’s an insane amount of gold production. I watch gold rush and last season the two largest producer were just about 11k ounces, moving and washing a massive amount of dirt and rocks.
If the price of gold didn't go up several thousand percent since the Klondike Gold Rush, there would be 0 reason to be up there at all. The Klondike produced -- on the low end of estimates -- 10 million ounces of gold worth in 10's of billions of dollars in today's money.
Also Yukon (and that show) is majority placer, while Nevada looks to be hard rock? Hitting a rich vein means a massive payday, but even if not, the amount of rock they're moving is absolutely bonkers. Look at some of the massive craters they're digging out! 10, 20, 30 feet of topsoil to get to a few feet of pay gravel over a few dozen acres of ground is just not the same thing.
Dunno even what reclaimation looks like for a 1/2 mile deep crater. I'm guessing, "nothing lol deal with it"
You gotta remember, if those miners weren't basically jumped up amateurs they wouldn't be on a tv show.
I remember watching the first couple seasons of that show. Every time it went to commercial break they'd try to hype up the melodrama with "we gotta do X or we're not gonna reach a thousand ounces!"
My wife and I still quote that to each other out of the blue.
Admittedly I live in a state roughly 3x the area of Texas.
Crazy idea go look at a map.
Theres one mine outside a town, that has more gold than all of America.
Half the worlds lithum for example also comes from WA. Most of the worlds treasures that are dug out of the ground can also be found there. Most of it has never seen a person, theres far more there to be found one day in the future.