Fort Knox Gold: How Much Is There and What It Is Worth

How much gold is in Fort Knox

The Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service publishes the Status Report of US Government Gold Reserves every month. The report for 30 September 2026 lists 147,341,858.382 fine troy ounces in deep storage at the Fort Knox Bullion Depository in Kentucky. The number does not move. All 177 monthly records in the Fiscal Data series, from January 2012 to September 2026, carry the same Fort Knox figure to the thousandth of an ounce.

Fort Knox is the largest of the government's gold sites, with a little over half of the total. The rest sits at the Mint's facilities in West Point and Denver, in the Mint's working stock of coins and blanks, and at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Source: US Treasury. Tonnes converted at 32,150.75 troy ounces per metric tonne.

Fort Knox, West Point and Denver together form what the Mint calls deep storage: 245,262,897.04 ounces kept in sealed vaults, mostly as bars. Deep storage is the part of the reserve that is audited every year.

What the Fort Knox gold is worth

Two prices apply, and they are far apart. The Treasury values its gold at $42.2222 per fine troy ounce, the statutory rate set in 31 U.S.C. 5117. At that rate the Fort Knox gold is carried at $6,221,097,412.78 and the full reserve at $11.04 billion. The Federal Reserve's H.4.1 balance sheet release for the week ended 21 October 2026 shows a gold stock of $11,041 million, the same book figure.

Gold for December delivery settled at $4,074.60 an ounce on COMEX on 27 October 2026. At that price:

• the 147.3 million ounces at Fort Knox are worth about $600 billion
• the full 261.5 million ounce reserve is worth about $1.07 trillion

The Treasury's audited schedule makes the same comparison once a year. At 30 September 2025, with the LBMA Gold Price at $3,825.30, the 245.3 million ounces in deep storage had a statutory value of $10.36 billion and a market value of $938.2 billion.

A short history of the depository

Congress authorised the transfer of land at Fort Knox from the military to the Treasury in August 1935. Construction finished in December 1936 at a cost of $560,000, and the first gold arrived on 13 January 1937 from the Philadelphia Mint and the New York Assay Office, according to the US Mint.

• 31 December 1941: holdings reach their recorded peak of 649.6 million ounces, more than four times today's figure.
• 1942 to 1944: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are stored in the depository during the war.
• 28 April 1943: President Franklin Roosevelt inspects the depository. The Mint later described this as the only time a gold vault had been opened for anyone other than authorised staff.
• 23 September 1974: members of Congress and the press are let in after rumours that the gold had been removed. The Mint's release that week put Fort Knox at 147.4 million ounces, stored in 13 vault compartments.
• 24 August 2017: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin and members of Congress visit the vaults.
• 10 August 2026: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky tours the vault and reports afterwards that the gold, about 147 million ounces, is there.

The Mint states that, apart from very small samples taken to test purity during scheduled audits, no gold has been moved in or out of the depository for many years. A standard bar measures 7 by 3 5/8 by 1 3/4 inches and weighs about 400 troy ounces, or 27.5 pounds.

Is the gold at Fort Knox audited?

The Treasury's Office of Inspector General audits the Mint's Schedules of Custodial Deep Storage Gold and Silver Reserves every year. Those schedules cover Fort Knox, West Point and Denver. The latest report, OIG-26-002, dated 12 December 2025, covers 30 September 2025 and 2024. It found that the schedules were presented fairly in all material respects, that there were no material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting based on the limited procedures performed, and no reportable noncompliance with the laws and regulations tested.

The same report states that the Mint did not use deep storage gold or silver to make coins in fiscal 2025 or 2024. Gold held at the New York Fed and the Mint's working stock fall outside these schedules.

Critics who say Fort Knox has never been properly audited usually point to 1974. That year the Mint announced a special settlement, or audit, to begin on 24 September, carried out by auditors from the General Accounting Office and the Treasury with Mint technicians trained in assaying and weighing bullion.

Doubt has not gone away. On 19 February 2025 President Trump said his administration would go to Fort Knox "to make sure the gold is there". Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Treasury audits the gold every year and that "all the gold is present and accounted for", as CNBC reported the next day. Eighteen months later Senator Paul made his visit. Neither event changed the reported figure.

Why Fort Knox matters to the dollar story

Fort Knox held 147.4 million ounces in 1974 and holds 147.3 million now. What has changed is the dollar used to price them. Under the Gold Act of 1900 an ounce was fixed at $20.67, a rate that held until the spring of 1933. The Gold Reserve Act, signed on 30 January 1934, transferred ownership of all monetary gold to the Treasury and reset the price at $35, cutting the gold value of the dollar to 59% of its 1900 level, according to the Federal Reserve's history of the act. The $35 rate anchored the Bretton Woods system until President Nixon closed the gold window on 15 August 1971.

At $4,074.60 an ounce on 27 October 2026, a dollar buys about 0.5% of the gold it bought at $20.67. The gold price history shows that move year by year, and the priced-in-gold tool applies the same arithmetic to a new house, a barrel of oil, the Dow and median household income.

The reserve also looks small next to federal borrowing. Total public debt outstanding was $40.46 trillion on 23 October 2026, per Treasury's Debt to the Penny data. All 261.5 million ounces at the market price would cover about 2.6% of it; at the statutory price, under 0.03%. The national debt clock tracks the other side of that ratio. For what has driven the market price since 2024, see why gold has been going up.