Geochemical Exploration of the Carlin Trend

Abstract Geochemical exploration has always been a key to Newmont's success in gold exploration on the Carlin Trend. In the early 1960's, Newmont geologists John Livermore and Alan Coope discovered the Carlin gold deposit by systematic outcrop and float sampling of favorable areas defined by geologic mapping (Coope, 1991a). In the 30 years since that time, Newmont geologists have discovered many more gold deposits using the same exploration methods, thus defining the Carlin Trend. The purpose of this paper is to relate both the history of geochemical exploration on the Carlin Trend and current practices in geochemical exploration on the Carlin Trend today. Several papers devoted to this subject have been published previously; most notably papers by Coope (1991b) and Craig and Wakefield (1991).