Historic and active gold-bearing mining districts across New Mexico, mapped with deposit geology, production history, land ownership, and current claim/operator status compiled from USGS, NMBGMR, EMNRD, and BLM records.
36Districts
8Active / exploring
3.2M+Oz Au, state total
Read before use:this tool synthesizes public USGS, NM Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources, EMNRD, and BLM records assembled by an AI research process in July 2026 — it is a research starting point, not a survey, title report, or investment/legal advice. Historic production figures frequently conflict between sources and are reported as found, not reconciled. No live claim data is embedded here — before staking, drilling, or transacting, verify current claim status at reports.blm.gov/reports/MLRS, permit status with NM EMNRD Mining & Minerals Division, and water rights with the NM Office of the State Engineer.
Every USGS MRDS site with gold among its recorded commodities — larger dot = currently producing, smaller = past producer/prospect/occurrence. Color is a screening heuristic, not a legal determination: green = BLM land, open to mineral entry, no claim overlap found; orange = ambiguous (Forest Service/other/unknown ownership, a Wilderness Study Area, or a closed/expired prior claim); red = private land, an active claim already here, or legally closed. Always verify at reports.blm.gov/reports/MLRS before acting — click a point for the reasoning behind its color and a link to the source MRDS record.
Every USGS GNIS “Populated Place” in New Mexico — GNIS doesn’t have a separate “ghost town” category, so this one dataset covers both historic mining camps/ghost towns and small currently-inhabited towns together, with no way to tell from the data alone which is which.
BLM MLRS claim boundaries, synced weekly — informational and best-effort, not a substitute for a title or professional claims search. Confirm current status at reports.blm.gov/reports/MLRS before acting. Orange = active, gray = closed.
NM Office of the State Engineer’s county-assessor parcel service — public tax record (owner name, mailing address, legal description), covering the 16 counties with a gold district. Fetched live for whatever’s in view, not synced or stored — zoom in to load (statewide detail would be hundreds of thousands of parcels). Owner-name labels appear once you’re zoomed in close enough to read them; click or hover any parcel for the full record. Always verify at the county assessor before acting; ownership/mailing data can lag behind recent sales.
Real roads from USFS’s Motor Vehicle Use Map + BLM’s national road inventory — the same sources “Check this spot” already checks, now drawn as actual lines you can follow. Solid green = passenger vehicle OK; dashed amber = high-clearance/4WD only; dotted gray = motorized-legal but vehicle class not specified in the source. Fetched live for whatever’s in view, not synced or stored. BLM’s own road inventory is genuinely sparse outside National Forest land — a gap here doesn’t mean no road exists. Always verify current status (seasonal closures, washouts, gates) before driving out.
Trip planning
Sign in to drop private notes anywhere on the map and see notes other users have shared.
Geology & advanced (for deeper research)
~7 mi grid cells inside NM’s real gold-bearing belts, EXCLUDING anywhere within ~0.28 mi (1,500 ft — the legal maximum length of one lode mining claim, 30 U.S.C. § 23) of an already-known mine — this asks “where might undiscovered gold be,” not a ranking of already-productive ground. Pale gold → rust = low → high score, from bedrock lithology + rock-contact proximity + copper/lead/zinc/barium/cobalt geochem anomaly. An experimental screening heuristic, not a resource estimate — click a point for the full reasoning and its (separately scored) land accessibility.
NMBGMR’s own real mapped fault traces — not this site’s own hand-curated “vein/fault trend hint” lines above, a different, short-extension dataset. As of this build, the live source service returns zero usable geometry for this specific layer (a confirmed gap on NMBGMR’s end, not this app’s) — the toggle and pipeline are live and ready, expect this to populate automatically once the source is restored.
Terrain
Tip: hover anywhere on the map and pause for a second or two to see everything we have on that point, no click needed.
Real USGS imagery+topo basemap and real county-assessor parcel boundaries/owner names — public tax record, not a survey-grade or title-grade parcel map. Belt overlays are generalized deposit-category regions from NMBGMR descriptions, not mapped contacts — click a shaded belt to isolate its districts. For actual mapped bedrock geology, see the “Bedrock geology (NMBGMR)” layer toggle below the map. Scroll/drag or arrow keys to pan; the map itself is not the accessible selection surface — use the list or table below for full keyboard/screen reader access.
Map key — what the colors mean
Fill — land ownership
BLM
USFS
Private
Municipal
Mixed
Unverified
Ring — selected district
Active / exploring
Reclamation only
Inactive
Pins (AI assistant & search — not a data layer)
“View on map” / searched location
Directions start
Directions destination
Mineral entry status (map overlay, independent of “color by”)