Fortitude Gold starts County Line mine operations, gets permits for Scarlet South

Fortitude Gold now has a second producing asset in Nevada after announcing the start of mining operations at its exploration-stage County Line project.

Fortitude is developing five high-grade gold projects along the historic Walker Lane mineral belt, leveraging the existing facilities at its Isabella Pearl mine, a conventional open-pit heap leach operation that is already producing gold dore.

In a press release Wednesday, the Denver-based gold miner said it has made the first shipment of mineralization from County Line to the Isabella Pearl processing facility, located about 14 miles away.

“We are excited to have begun operations at County Line, marking another Fortitude Gold milestone of placing our second Nevada gold mine into production,” Fortitude Gold’s CEO Jason Reid said in a news release.

The new mine consists of two historic open pits, with mining occurring initially from the bottom of the County Line pit. According to Fortitude, it plans to proceed with a pit layback during the second half of 2026 and extend into the second half of 2027.

In the meantime, the company is updating the County Line mineral resource to include exploration drilling from the other East pit, which was not included in the original 2022 resource estimate.

The project has several areas with exploration upside potential that are anticipated to expand the project’s mine life, including a target north of the County Line pit, an area south of the East pit, the Newman Ridge area to the east, as well as an area further to the south at the historic Rex mine, Fortitude said.

Scarlet South

Earlier in the week, Fortitude also received approvals from the Bureau of Land Management and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection to construct and operate the Scarlet South open-pit gold mine.

The project is located approximately 500 meters northwest of its Isabella Pearl mine and processing facilities. Operations are expected to begin at Scarlet South in the coming weeks, the company said.

“Having recently been granted permits for our Scarlet South open pit, we now target our third operating gold mine at Scarlet South in the very near future,” Reid said. “Once we are granted permits, our synergistic hub and spoke business plan allows us to place new mines into production much faster and for less capital by leveraging existing infrastructure as opposed to building brand new processing facilities at every new mine.”

“We plan to deliver gold to our Isabella Pearl processing facility from three different sources, Isabella Pearl deep, County Line and Scarlet South, in 2026,” he added.