It was $12 million higher than our previous record.
I went back and looked at the last 30 years, and about 20 of the 30 were the lowest.
There were about 10 where the first quarter wasn't the lowest cash flow for the year.
Our silver-linked dividend payment that occurs at $25 will be increased by 50% to $0.03 per share annually, and Russell's going to speak more about that.
We're returning about 28% of our free cash flow in the first quarter to shareholders.
And despite the good performance, we were able to maintain our low all-in frequency rate about 1.71 for the first quarter.
Hecla continued to strengthen its balance sheet as we ended the first quarter with $140 million in cash aided by record margins from higher prices and strong operating performance.
With cash almost doubled since the second-quarter 2020 from consecutive quarters of strong free cash flow, we delivered a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of 1.4 times, well below our target of two times, while providing the liquidity position at $390 million.
If you look at the gold portion of the bar, you see that our margin this quarter was about double the second and fourth quarter of last year, and about 50% more than the third quarter.
First-quarter free cash flow was $16.5 million after negative working capital changes of $29.3 million using interest payments of $18.4 million and the timing of incentive compensation payments related to 2020 performance and higher accounts receivables from timing of concentration.
But maybe more important is the trailing 12 months free cash flow $121 million.
We see the future 12 months of having the same or better free cash flow the current prices.
Moving to Slide 8 with the growth anticipating our free cash flow over the remainder of the year, the board has approved an increase to our silver-linked dividends of $0.01 per share.
This equates to a 50% increase in the dividend rate at the $25 per ounce threshold to $0.03 per year.
At $25 per ounce realized price, the enhanced dividend policy has an implied yield of 7.4% to the silver price.
Our teams continue their exemplary safety performance, and our all injury frequency rate in the first quarter was 1.71, which is a reduction of 72% since implementing a revised safety and health management system in 2012.
On slide 11, at the Green Creek mine, we produced 2.6 million ounces of silver and 13,200 ounces of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of $1.59 per ounce for the quarter.
With these changes, updated cash cost guidance for Greens Creek is lowered to $1.50 to $2.25 per ounce and all-in sustaining cash costs are lowered to $6.50 to $7.25 per ounce.
Going to slide 12, the Lucky Friday achieved full production in the fourth quarter of 2020 and produced 0.9 million ounces of silver in the first quarter of 2021.
Production at the mine is expected to exceed 3.4 million ounces this year.
We anticipate the grades to improve as we mine deeper, increasing the projected production to around 5 million ounces annually by 2023.
At the Casa Berardi mine, shown on slide 13, we had a strong first quarter with production of 36,200 ounces of gold at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,272 per ounce.
And the mill has maintained greater than 90% availability since October of 2020.
Our 2021 guidance for Casa Berardi remains unchanged and production is expected to exceed 125,000 ounces at all-in sustaining costs of $1,185 to $1,275 per ounce.
Moving to Slide 14, at the Nevada Operations, we produced about 2,500 ounces of gold from a stockpiled bulk sample of refractory ore that was processed at a third-party roaster.
For the rest of the year, production is expected to be in the range of 17,000 to 19,000 ounces of gold, from the processing of oxide ore at the Midas mill and an additional 22,000 tons of refractory ore through third-party facilities.
Roughly 12,000 tons will be sent to a roaster and about 10,000 times to an autoclave.
And in addition to the exploration spend in Nevada, we'll be investing in other $5 million in pre-development activities this year at Hollister to access the Hatter Graben.
Now this new guidance, if you look at this, it adds about $3 an ounce to our expected margin.
So at current prices, we think we have about $10 an ounce of free cash flow generation just from the silver operations.
The other thing to point out is that with the consistency that we have at Greens Creek and Lucky Friday at full production, and the increasing grade that we see at Lucky Friday that our U.S. silver production's expected to reach about 15 million ounces by 2023.
If you think about it, the photographic demand decline, which was a governor on total demand over the last 20 years is now long over.
Industrial demand has been growing at a 2% growth rate for the last decade.
Industrial demand has generally been strong for the last 20 years and looks to be even stronger with the current fiscal and monetary policies.
We actually mined 110 million ounces less than the high of 2016.
Now it's just industrial demand continues to grow at the same rate as the last decade so that 2% growth rate.
The world's going to need 70 million more ounces of silver per year.
Now this doesn't sound like much, because it's only 7% of the current market, until you realize that to meet that demand, even if no mines are exhausted, you need seven new mines a year that are the size of Greens Creek, which is the United States largest silver mine or you needed to produce about 150% more or you need Codelco who has a substantial byproduct of silver production to produce three times as much silver.
And I'm struck, if you look at what happened in 2020, when ETF and coin demand rose dramatically, prices rose 50% over the roughly average silver price of 2018 and 2019.
We don't think we'll have lows for any significant period of time to be below $18 to $20 an ounce.
So to see a $50 plus silver price is not unreasonable.
And silver is like gold, but unlike gold, only about 20% of the demand for silver is an investment.
And for gold, only about 10% is industrial demand.

Summary:
Our silver-linked dividend payment that occurs at $25 will be increased by 50% to $0.03 per share annually, and Russell's going to speak more about that.
This equates to a 50% increase in the dividend rate at the $25 per ounce threshold to $0.03 per year.