Note: The photo was taken on July 24, 2025 at the Empire Mine State Historic Park in Grass Valley. The Empire Mine was one of the most productive gold mines in California.
Reuters reports that today, January 27, 2026, gold prices reached an all-time high due to continued economic and geopolitical uncertainty. Spot gold hit $5,136.47 per ounce; prices reached the $5,000 mark for the first time the previous day. Gold prices have increased more than 18% so far in 2026. Gold, according to Reuters, rose about 64% in 2025, its greatest annual increase since 1979.
There have been several gold price surges throughout US history. Here is a brief timelime:
According to the Library of Congress, the United States originally used a bimetallic standard in which coins were minted with both gold and silver with a value ratio of 15:1 (15 ounces of silver for every one ounce of gold). This lasted for 40 years. In1834 the Coinage Act changed the ratio to 16-to-1. Gold, thanks to the California gold rush, became more domestically desirable, ultimately leading to the gold standard in the United States.
The Gold Standard Act of 1900 “established gold as the sole basis for redeeming paper currency” and set the value of gold at $20.67 an ounce. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the value of gold to $35 an ounce and in response to the Great Depression, the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 took gold out of circulation.
The post WWII Bretton Woods agreement maintained gold was the basis for the U.S. dollar, and other currencies “were pegged to the U.S. dollar’s value.” In 1971, President Richard Nixon ended the gold standard and the conversion of gold into dollars. Gold prices doubled from approximately $40 to $70 per ounce within a year and by May 1973, prices had tripled.
According to Cutting Edge PR, the 1979 Iranian Revolution created oil supply disruptions. Gold rose $233 at the start of 1979 and peaked at $661.50 in February 1980. The 2008 financial crisis helped raise prices to $1,100 by 2010 and $1,800 in August 2011. In October 2024, gold rose to $2,800 per ounce and in December 2024 going close to $100 higher.
