Gold mining in Alaska has been a major industry and impetus for exploration and settlement since a few years after the United States acquired the territory from Russia. Russian explorers discovered placer gold in the Kenai River in 1848, but no gold was produced. Gold mining started in 1870 from placers southeast of Juneau, Alaska.

Gold is found and has been mined throughout Alaska; except in the vast swamps of the Yukon Flats, and along the North Slope between the Brooks Range and the Beaufort Sea. Areas near Fairbanks, Juneau, and Nome are responsible for most of Alaska’s historical and current gold production. Nearly all of the large and many of the small placer gold mines currently operating in the US are in Alaska. Six modern large-scale hard rock mines operate in Alaska in 2008; four of those are gold-producing mines (an additional gold mine suspended production in late 2007). There are also some small-scale hard rock gold-mining operations. Alaska currently produces more gold (in 2007: 673,274 troy oz from lode mines, and 53,848 troy oz from placer deposits) than any state except Nevada. In 2007, gold accounted for 15% of the mining wealth produced in Alaska. Zinc and lead, mainly from the Red Dog mine, accounted for 73%; silver, mainly from the Greens Creek mine, accounted for 8%; coal and aggregates accounted for nearly 2% each. Alaska produced a total of 40.3 million troy ounces of gold from 1880 through the end of 2007

The following are active gold-producing mines and advanced lode exploration or development projects.

Placer mines

Placer mining continues throughout Alaska. In 2007, an estimated 175 placer mines produced 53,848 ounces of gold, an approximately 15% drop in activity and production compared to 2006. All of these operations are seasonal, none employ more than a few dozen people. Many of them are family operations with roots reaching back several generations. One mine, at Nolan Creek, mines frozen gravels by underground methods. A significant portion of current exploration for lode gold in Alaska occurs in placer gold camps.

Lode (hard rock) mines

Large-scale hard rock mines producing gold

• The Greens Creek mine, owned and operated by Hecla Mining, located on private patented claims and on federal land in the Admiralty mining district, is primarily a silver-lead-zinc mine, produced 73,000 troy ounces (2.3 tonnes) of gold in 2006 and a similar amount in 2007.
• Fort Knox mine, owned and operated by Kinross Gold on State of Alaska-owned land in the Fairbanks mining district, produced 333,000 troy ounces (10.3 tonnes) of gold in 2006 and a similar amount in 2007.
• Pogo mine, owned and operated by Teck Cominco, on State of Alaska-owned land in the Goodpaster district, produced 260,000 troy ounces (8.1 tonnes) of gold in 2007, more than double production in 2006.
• Rock Creek mine, owned and operated by NovaGold Resources, on privately owned land in the Nome mining district. Constructed in 2007 and 2008, the mine began producing gold in September 2008, but is now on care and maintenance pending significant modifications to the mill, which has design flaws.

Large-scale hard rock gold mines under development (construction)

Kensington and Jualin; adjacent historical underground gold-in-quartz-veins mines in the Juneau mining district which are poised to reopen after $270 million of exploration and construction efforts since 2005, pending efforts to permit disposal of mine tailings. The ore deposits occur on privately-owned patented lands, some mine facilities, including planned disposal of mine tailings occupy public land. Initially-issued permits were challenged in court, and eventually vacated. Over 2 million troy ounces of gold resource in 8.8 million tons of ore are reported.

Advanced hard rock exploration projects of note

• Donlin Creek, in the Kuskokwim Gold Belt, contains an estimated 29.3 million ounces of Proven and Probable gold reserves (calculated at a gold price of $750) and an additional 10 million ounces of gold resource. Donlin is one of the largest known undeveloped gold deposits in the world. If developed according to plans published in spring 2009 it will be one of the largest gold mines in the world. Applications for permits will begin in 2009 and construction could begin as early as 2012 A large and robust series of felsic sills and dikes hosts the gold in association with small-scale quartz (and lesser quartz and/or carbonate) veinlets. The sills intrude a thick sequence (5000+ feet) of non-metamorphosed, folded, graywacke, sandstone, and shale. The deposit occurs on private land owned by native corporations Calista Corporation and The Kuskokwim Corp. Donlin Creek LLC, equally-owned by Barrick Gold and NovaGold Resources, holds a lease on the land and operates the project.
• Pebble Copper, discovered in the mid-1980s, is one of the largest known copper-gold porphyry deposits in the world. It is located on State of Alaska-owned land. The deposit contains measured+indicated+inferred resources of 72-billion pounds of copper, 94-million ounces of gold, and 4.8-billion pounds of molybdenum, within 9.1 billion tonnes of ore. Tens of million of dollars are spent annually on the project, an initial mining plan is expected in 2009, with permitting scheduled for 2010.
• Nixon Fork mine in the McGrath Mining District. First exploited in 1907, this underground operation exploits high-grade gold skarn ore bodies along contacts between Cretaceous granitoid and metamorphosed Paleozoic sediments. The mine, after decades of inactivity, returned to production for several years in the mid-1990s, and again in 2006 and 2007, when a significant variation between actual and predicted headgrades occurred. An updated resource evaluation is pending further work.
• The Niblack prospect, a zinc-copper-silver-gold VMS deposit on southeastern Prince of Wales Island, in the Ketchikan Mining District. Ore occurs as massive sulfide bodies hosted in a local rhyolite belt within a package of deeply deformed and metamorphosed volcanic and sedimentary rocks. In the last ten years, significant underground and surface exploration occurred at this early-1900s minesite. A recent estimate reports a near surface indicated resource of 4073 kg of gold, 59,424 kg of silver, 14,810 metric tons of copper, and 30,474 metric tons of zinc contained in 1,424,000 metric tons of ore; and deeper inferred resources of 3,919 kg of gold, 55,295 kg of silver, 31,235 metric tons of copper, and 106,192 metric tons of zinc within 1,893,000 metric tons of ore. Further exploration is planned.
• Dozens of other significant exploration efforts for gold, across the state, contributed to the total of over $310 million dollars spent on mineral exploration in Alaska in 2007.