A Black Hills mining company says it’s found a “robust” potential deposit of minerals in the northern Black Hills.
Last week Dakota Gold Corporation announced it thinks they’ve identified a resource of 3.65 million ounces of extractable gold at its Richmond Hill location.
That’s about the same amount gold the Wharf Mine — located a half-mile to the south — has produced since 1982.
According to an initial assessment released by Dakota Gold Corporation, the discovery could lead to active mining.
“So, we’re still relatively early in the process. We know that there’s a big prize out there," said Patrick Malone, senior vice president with Dakota Gold. "We now have to go into the hard work of doing studies to really understand what the best, responsible, most profitable way is of going about developing this project into the future.”
Company officials say the initial assessment is not a statement of reserves, which are proven resources that are economically viable to mine. However, they say the paper does show a relatively high confidence of gold availability.
Richmond Hill is owned by Barrick Gold—a mining company that acquired the Homestake Mine in 2001. Dakota Gold has options on the mineral rights for Richmond Hill until the end of 2028.
Richmond Hill is the site of a former mine. Dakota Gold has been performing exploratory drilling on the site for the last three years.
Malone describes next steps in the process for Dakota Gold to determine the resource that exists at Richmond Hill.
“We have gold in the ground. The next step is, depending on the outcome of this study, we have gold in the ground that we think will be economically profitable to mine. Then, after that, during the feasibility study we will do engineering that says ‘Okay, now that we kind of know what we’re trying to accomplish, how would we do that?’”
If it turns into a mine, Dakota Gold expects Richmond Hill will have similar economics to the Wharf Mine, which produced over 93,000 ounces of gold in 2023 and remitted $6.3 million in gold severance taxes to the state.
Gold is currently trading at $2,900 an ounce.
