Pull up a stool. The price tape did the recruiting. Gold reached record intraday highs near $4,350/oz on January 29, 2026, before a multi-week sell-off, but never broke much below roughly $4,200/oz. Copper, for its part, struck an all-time high of $14,527.50 per tonne the same day and has held around $13,700 since. At those numbers, US dirt that didn't pencil for a generation suddenly does. The constraint isn't grade anymore — it's the permit map.
The rocks came back into the money two years ago. What separates a drill rig from a press release now is whether your ground is private, and whether someone can sue you on federal land.
Nevada — where the desk's money is. The standout is AngloGold Ashanti's (NYSE: AU) Arthur project in the Beatty district. AngloGold reported a first-time Probable Reserve of 4.9Moz of gold (88Mt at 1.75 g/t) as at 31 December 2025, supporting an initial nine-year mine life averaging ~500,000oz a year, with a further 1.0Moz indicated and 5.5Moz inferred at Merlin sitting outside the reserve. The Silicon–Merlin find even won the PDAC 2026 Thayer Lindsley Award for an international mineral discovery. Down the trend, i-80 Gold (NYSE American: IAUX) is rebuilding: Franco-Nevada put up a $250M royalty financing — $225M on closing, expected in March 2026 — over Granite Creek, Ruby Hill, Cove and Lone Tree. Archimedes construction commenced in Q3 2025 with first production expected in 2026, though water management at Granite Creek has been the biggest operational obstacle — the company couldn't access deeper zones without permanent dewatering. The incumbents still own the trend: Nevada Gold Mines' Turquoise Ridge complex sits ~10 km from Granite Creek, owned roughly 60-40 by Barrick ($B) and Newmont ($NEM).
Arizona — copper, and the private-land cheat code. Hudbay (TSX/NYSE: HBM) cracked it on Copper World by going around the federal problem. Copper World is the alternative to Hudbay's stalled Rosemont project, which a 2019 federal court ruling blocked; Copper World is being developed mainly on private land under state and local permits. CEO Peter Kukielski called it "the best fully permitted copper development project in the Americas," with a definitive feasibility study targeted for first-half 2026 and a sanctioning decision in 2026. Ivanhoe Electric (NYSE American: IE) is running the same private-land play at Santa Cruz: a June 2025 PFS confirming a high-grade underground mine, construction to begin in the first half of 2026, delivering 1.5Mt of copper over a 23-year life, backed by a Letter of Interest from EXIM for up to $825 million in debt financing under the Make More in America initiative. Freeport-McMoRan ($FCX), the established Arizona producer, is the quiet beneficiary of any refined-copper tariff — the US commerce secretary is expected to recommend on copper tariffs by June 2026, with Goldman's base case at least 25%.
And the cautionary tale: Resolution Copper, the Rio Tinto ($RIO)/BHP ($BHP) joint venture sitting on what it says is the second-largest known copper deposit in the world. After the Supreme Court declined the Apache Stronghold appeal in May 2025, the 9th Circuit turned down one of the last surviving challenges, Resolution now owns Oak Flat, and drilling is ramping up — a decade-plus fight, and still not settled in the court of public opinion.
Alaska — frontier, all-or-nothing. Two political tape-bombs. On the green light: Trump granted the Ambler Road permits on October 6, 2025, and the federal government took a stake in Trilogy Metals (NYSE American: TMQ) — a 10% position via a $36.5 million investment, with Trilogy partnered with South32 on Ambler development. On the red light: Northern Dynasty (NYSE-A: NAK) tumbled in February 2026 after the DOJ filed a brief backing the EPA's veto of its Pebble project, the stock trading near C$1.80 for roughly a C$1 billion cap — Trump is all-in on Alaska mining with Pebble the glaring exception. Meanwhile Donlin changed hands: NOVAGOLD (NYSE American: NG) and Paulson completed a $1 billion deal on June 3, 2025 to buy Barrick's 50%, lifting NOVAGOLD to 60% and Paulson to 40%, with a prime contractor for the bankable feasibility study expected to be selected in the first quarter of 2026. And the boring-but-profitable winner: Kinross's Fort Knox produced over 450,000 oz in 2025, a record, while pouring more than 240,000 oz from higher-grade Manh Choh ore, handing partner Contango (NYSE American: CTGO) approximately 60,200 gold-equivalent ounces for FY 2025.
Who's offside? Anyone whose orebody needs a federal signature and sits near a sacred site or a salmon run. Who's winning? The desks that bought private dirt in a Tier-1 jurisdiction before the price tape told everyone else to.