It started in the days of the gold and silver rushes of old, and yet today mining continues to be a prominent industry in Nevada. Most of the old boomtowns are now ghost towns but mining continues profitably in rural and urban areas around the state. Nevada is the 3rd largest producer of gold in the world, behind South Africa and Australia. With the gold from Nevada, the United States, as a whole, is ranked 3rd in the world, without it the United States would only produce 1% of the world's gold. Nevada mines produce over 85% of the gold that comes from the U.S. annually and 8.7% of the world's production. In 2005, Nevada mines produced barite, gypsum, lithium carbonate, magnesite, diatomite, and black fire opal. Nevada was second in the nation for silver production. The total value of mined commodities (excluding geothermal and oil production) in Nevada for 2005 was $3.7 billion, with $3.01 billion of that being from gold, $71.1 million from silver, and the rest from other industrial commodities such as aggregate, barite, clay, diatomite, gypsum, lithium, magnesium, and specialty clays.

IMV Nevada

The specialty clay mine operated by IMV Nevada in the Amargosa Valley (Nye County) has the only commercial sepiolite deposit in North America. This mine produced 30,630 tons of sepiolite, saponite, and bentonite in 2005.

The magnesite mine operated by Premier Chemicals, LLC in Gabbs (Nye County) is the only magnesite producer in the U.S.

Premier Chemicals, LLC

Round Mountain Gold Corp

The mine operated by Round Mountain Gold Corp. at Round Mountain (Nye County) produced approximately 10.7% of the gold and 6.4% of the silver that came out of Nevada in 2005.

Source: The Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, the NV Commission on Mineral Resources-Division of Minerals, and the Nevada Mining Association. Production information per country obtained from the U.S. Dept. of the Interior - U.S. Geological Survey, while state information obtained from the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.