South Africa’s Witwatersrand gold basin dominates the list of the world’s deepest mines, claiming seven of the ten spots. Chasing ever-thinner reef seams buried beneath ancient rock, South African engineers have bored deeper than anywhere else on earth, with Mponeng Gold Mine in Carletonville holding the record at 4 km below the surface.
The one notable new entrant is Laronde in Québec, Canada, a polymetallic mine producing gold, copper, silver and zinc that now ranks ninth at 3.26 km. It’s the only non-South African active mine in the top ten, and its inclusion edges out Blyvooruitzicht, which appeared on earlier versions of this list. Of the ten mines shown, six remain active.
The closed mines tell their own stories: India’s Kolar Gold Fields, once one of the oldest and most productive in the world, shut in 2001 when falling gold prices made its depth uneconomical despite gold still sitting in the rock. California’s Empire Mine, a 19th-century gold rush relic, closed as far back as 1956.
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