The gold occurs as disseminated micrometre-size free gold and as gold-silver tellurides, or telluride minerals. The Cripple Creek volcanic complex is surrounded by Precambrian gneiss, granite, and quartz monzonite. The ore is in altered and brecciated volcanic and volcanoclastic rocks of Oligocene age and predominantly quartz latite composition. Visitors can tour the mine with advance reservation through the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum in Victor, Colorado. The mine has a visitor center with displays about modern mining procedures, historical photos, ore and core samples, and mineral uses. CC&V's heap leach pad is one of the biggest in the world. The gold is recovered from the ore by heap leaching. It was owned and operated by AngloGold Ashanti through its subsidiary, the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company (CC&V), until 2015, when it sold the mine to Newmont Mining Corporation. The richest gold mine in Colorado history, it is the only remaining significant producer of gold in the state, and produced 322,000 troy ounces of gold in 2019, and reported 3.45 million troy ounces of Proven and Probable Reserves as at December 31, 2019.
The Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine, formerly and historically the Cresson Mine, is an active gold mine located near the town of Victor, in the Cripple Creek mining district in the US state of Colorado.
