Original subtitles

What's the most valuable nugget you ever found?

A piece of crystallized gold sold for 2.5 million.

Let's find one of those, Jim.

All right. So let's go.

We'll find it.

There's no mistake, there's a metal target there.

Get rid of the grass.

We're on something.

My gosh.

Are you kidding me?

That is freaking amazing.

In five minutes, we found a gold specimen

worth maybe 100 bucks.

Gold is everywhere.

My god.

There's an estimated $3 trillion

still undiscovered in america.

Woo!

And I wanna help you... Choose your weapon.

Find it.

- California gold, baby. - Yeah.

All you need is basic equipment.

You can get started with $15.

And a skill to decode the land.

That's a spot right there.

Yee-haw!

I'm Dave turin.

For the past 14 years,

I've mined millions of dollars of gold.

Yeah.

And now, I wanna show you where and how

I've seen it all now, vacuum cleaner.

Everyday people are catching it.

That's insane.

So that you can be the next one to hit it big.

Boom, baby.

Right here in america's backyard.

There's gold all through these mountains.

The original California gold rush

started right here.

This week,

I'm in the backyard of northern California,

the Sierra Nevada mountains.

It's here in 1849.

A gold nugget this big

was found in a stream at sutter's mill,

sparking the 49er gold rush.

In just five years,

over 300,000 Americans flooded to the west,

looking to make their fortune.

Since then, more than $243 billion of gold

has been found.

This really is mother lode country.

And today, the chance to strike it rich

in the golden state is stronger than ever.

Mother nature has produced a record amount of snow,

record amount of rainfall in California.

It's flushing out new gold,

and so people are finding gold

where they thought it was all clean out.

So I wanna show you

how to find some of it for yourself,

but let's start with where all this gold comes from.

Billions of years ago,

gold was an element formed in magma,

deep in the earth's core.

It Rose up through cracks in the Sierra Nevada mountains

and it cooled to form quartz veins rich with gold.

Erosion caused by weather, frees up the gold

and releases it into valleys and rivers.

And in the last five years,

California has seen unprecedented weather,

meaning there's more minable gold

than any other time in living history.

So right now, there's gold out there,

and anybody that's sitting on their couch at home

watching TV or something,

they can get up and go find gold.

I'm excited.

To kick off my hunt for where and how

everyday people are finding gold,

I'm in placerville, El dorado county,

10 miles from where the original California gold rush started.

Back in the 49er gold rush,

the hardware store was where everybody bought their supplies,

and so if you wanted to find out

where the gold was coming from

or who was striking it rich,

you'd go to the hardware store.

And there's no place with richer gold history

than placerville hardware,

which is run by my buddy, Albert.

- Hey. - You're here.

- Yeah, I'm here. - Yee-haw!

There's one of those guys.

I love it, man.

This is gold rush country.

- I mean it's... - this is where it started.

It's on your building. It's been here for how many years?

Since 1852.

It's the second continuously operating business

- in all of California. - No way.

Yeah. I'm the third generation

- keeping it alive. - Family business.

- I love it. - I know.

So you had all the supplies

for the miners that were out here.

Yup.

I wonder how many gold pans and picks and shovels

were sold out of here.

So many, studebaker wheelbarrows, dynamite.

- Yeah? - All the good stuff, you know.

Man.

The real winners of the California gold rush

were the suppliers.

For instance, the bavarian immigrant Levi Strauss,

who created unique

hard-wearing denim work pants called the 501.

The Levi Strauss company

still sell over six billion pairs of jeans every year,

and it's valued at over $5 billion.

So what's going on in this town?

You had these big fires around town.

Main street was flooding.

Those two kind of is made for a little easy gold.

A trio of natural disasters in the state

has created the perfect storm for gold miners.

Wildfires destroyed seven million acres of forest,

then historic rain and snow

sent 78 trillion gallons of water

flooding down the damaged mountains,

causing epic landslides

and washing new gold into the rivers.

I'm a sniper. I hop in the creeks

and there's more gold in my spot like...

It's like, wow.

It's a good time right now to find that gold.

It's pretty amazing how much has been found,

but it's even more amazing what hasn't been found.

You gotta just give it a go.

If you don't get out there and try it,

you're never gonna find it.

Well, I got something to show you here.

- Well, there we go. - There we go. Yeah.

Now, we're talking about some gold.

So is that gold you found?

Yeah, yeah. That's gold

right out of the creeks around here.

- Wow. - I found this in a day.

Let me see that ring you got on.

Ooh.

And this is your gold?

- That's all my gold. - Local gold?

Yeah, local gold.

I can kind of identify,

that's that one from that spot.

- Yeah. - You just don't forget.

- Yeah. - Isn't that cool?

What's that over there?

Good one, Dave. Good one.

Yeah. I see how this is going.

Taking that off the rest of the day.

Have you seen my pet raccoon yet?

No. Let's see the... you got a pet raccoon?

Yeah. We always have a pet raccoon

at the hardware store.

Anybody feed the raccoon this morning?

Are you kidding me?

See it right there?

See that pet raccoon?

Are you messing with me?

Whoa!

I had to do it. I had to do it.

And it gets everybody.

- It gets everybody. - It's all good.

- Well done. - There's a pretty cool thing

now that you don't need any coffee this morning.

- So this is... - you wanna go snipe?

- Yeah. - I do.

To the river we roll.

So this is your secret spot?

This is a secret spot.

Don't get no better than this.

The creek we're headed to is on private property.

And here's my top tip, always research

who owns the land that you're interested in,

and make sure that you get permission first.

Now, you know I've never sniped,

so you're gonna have to teach me the ropes.

- Once you see the gold. - Yeah.

You know what it looks like.

Yeah, I know.

That doesn't mean I know how to get it out the river.

Sniping is hunting for nuggets

in shallow rivers, searching for gold,

trapped in the fine cracks and crevices on the bedrock.

Okay. I guess I better get in the water.

I think right down here's kind of an easier

little pop head spot.

That's how you get in.

But that's how you get hurt.

You got your snuffer bottle?

Yeah. Right here.

You got to fill it up with a little water.

When it comes to equipment,

sniping is really simple.

All you need is a suction tool,

a $2 Turkey baster will do,

and a basic mask and snorkel.

It's sniping, no motors,

just your arm and your feet.

All right. You show me where we're starting.

Okay. Yeah.

Kind of see what I got going on.

I'm just kind of fanning the ground...

Is that... is that good?

- That's a big one. - That's a big one.

That's nice, man.

That's pretty awesome.

One down, many more to go.

You got to see this one, Dave.

That's a spot right there.

Found that little gold valley.

That's a good one, Dave.

That's a good one, man.

We keep hitting it.

Baby, that's a nice one right there.

Let's go throw it in the pan, see what we got.

My gosh, look at that.

Boom, baby.

Look at that.

Not a bad day at all right there.

Woo. California gold, baby.

Let's go.

That's what I dream about right there.

In just 30 minutes,

we've sniped half an ounce of gold,

which is worth over 800 bucks.

A little better than minimum wage.

If you did that every weekend,

you could bring home an extra 40 grand a year.

If there's a guy sitting at home

and thinks that he can't do this, it's untrue.

All you got to do is go find a spot like this,

enjoy the weather, enjoy the river.

And you know what?

You never know what you're gonna find.

It might just change your life.

- Thanks, man. - I know.

Anytime. Anytime.

Next, I'll show you how rich you can get

with just the metal detector.

The piece of gold sold for $2.5 million.

Prospecting is much more than just walking the ground

and putting a shovel in the ground and panning.

You gotta pick in as much intelligence as you can.

You put it together and then you start, you know,

figuring out the ground and where the gold is.

I'm Dave turin,

and this week I'm scouring.

California's golden backyard,

the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

This is a spot where landslides occur.

You can kind of see where all the rain,

all the water, all the snow that melts

just washed this canyon out.

Showing you where and how

everyday people are finding big gold.

Holy cow.

Now, that's a landslide right there.

Whoa.

It's taking it all the way down to bedrock.

If there was any gold in that dirt right there

that was carried down from up above,

where did it go?

Went over the road, straight down to the river.

See if we're gonna dig up any gold here.

Here's my prospecting tip.

Always be careful,

unstable ground like landslide areas

can shift at any time.

It's the first time I've ever panned

at the base of the landslide.

Pretty scary.

That's a good little piece of gold right there.

And there's some fine.

This proves that there's good evidence

of gold in the hills.

Really, all I'm doing is piecing together the clues

and figure out where the good gold is.

If finding big gold takes detective work,

then the next person I'm meeting,

he must be Sherlock Holmes.

I'm in the 49er gold rush town of Plymouth, California

to meet a gold hunting master

whose nugget discoveries are legendary.

Are you Jim?

- Yup. - Dave.

I tracked down Jim eakin after he made headlines

unearthing a massive 19 ounce nugget,

which he cashed in for a brand new

top of the line pickup.

How many years you been doing this?

I've been coming out since I was

four, three, four years old.

No kidding.

Let's go find some gold.

I love it, man.

I worked in the computer industry for a little while

and I love the job,

but I just hated the commute traffic

living in San Jose, working in mountain view.

This is freedom.

It allows you to do what you want to do

and have fun doing it.

You're not tied to the man telling you what to do.

Jim traded in his desk job for a metal detector

and now spends his time searching

where old timers used to mine.

I don't know if you can see that little thin line

across there in the trees.

That's an old water ditch.

- Okay. - 'Cause that's where

the old timers were taking water

to hydraulic mine and ground sluice.

Well, when they were putting that ditch in,

they cut a quartz vein that had gold in it,

so they started mining it right there.

- No kidding. - So before they found it,

the quartz had eroded away.

And that's how the gold is down in these draws.

Okay. What's the most valuable

nugget you ever found?

Piece of crystallized gold

and the piece of gold sold for 2.5 million.

- So... - why did it sell for that much?

Because it's crystallized gold,

not just a gold nugget.

You get a premium on 'em,

it can go up to $1 million an ounce.

Crystallized gold is gold in its purest form,

untouched since it embedded in quartz rock

millions of years ago.

Once the surrounding quartz is removed,

it leaves a uniquely textured nugget.

It is so rare.

It accounts for just 1% of the world's gold.

Let's find one of those, Jim.

I wanna learn from the master.

I was wanting to see this

- just real quick. - Go. Go ahead.

My normal search wing is right in front of me.

- It's not this. - Yeah.

I see people out all the time doing this.

A foot above the ground

for every inch you bring the coil off the ground,

that's one less inch you got penetration...

- Yeah. - Into the ground.

- Yeah. Yeah. Yup. - Okay.

Metal detectors transmit an electromagnetic field

and any metal objects

within that field become energized

and it sends back a signal to the detector.

See, you can hear it.

Here you go, Dave.

- Hearing? - Yeah. I hear it.

I... I'm listening.

Just hit.

See that whole piece of wire?

Stop.

- That's it? - That's it.

Yeah. That's part of the game.

- It's just the wire? - -Just a piece of iron wire.

It takes a strong arm and a lot of Patience,

but you can pick up an entry level detector

starting at just a few hundred bucks

and the payoff can be huge.

There you go.

- Yeah. - There's no mistake

there's a metal target there.

First thing you wanna do is get rid of the grass.

So you do is take this.

It's in that block.

My gosh.

- See the gold? - Are you fricking kidding me?

I see it now.

I would've never found it.

That is amazing.

That's a crystallized piece of gold too.

Wow.

So, we came out here.

In 55 minutes, we found a gold specimen

worth maybe 100 bucks.

Pretty exciting.

It's who you know and where you go.

I got something to show you here.

Whoa. I like this.

Man, beautiful gold.

So, how much do you think this is all worth

if I were to buy it?

- Probably $30,000. - Wow.

This is one of twenty-nine cases that I got.

I only got one out of the bank vault

- and to bring. - You've got 29 cases

- similar to this? - Yes.

My gosh. That is awesome.

All in, Jim has found

nearly three and a half million dollars'

worth of gold.

That's not bad for a guy

who doesn't own a single piece

of heavy equipment.

You probably got enough gold.

You probably made enough money

that you don't have to do this for a living, do you?

- No. - Why do you keep doing it?

'Cause it's the hunt.

- I know, right? - It's the thrill of the hunt.

- It's fun. - Yeah.

If I'm hunting gold, I'm happy.

Yeah. I like that.

Between detecting with Jim

and sniping with Albert,

it's clear that northern California

is truly mother nature's atm.

I tell you what, I don't think a guy

that came out here for the 49er gold rush,

they're that much different than me or Jim.

We do it for the love of gold.

It's an amazing way to pay the bills.

It really is.

Next, I meet a couple

rebuilding their life with gold...

What do you do? You're broke.

You've got really nowhere to go.

One pan at a time.

- My gosh. - Yeah.

Here we are. It's gold country

in the heart of the California gold rush

where it all started.

One hundred and seventy-five years

after the first California gold strike,

I'm on a mission to show you

the new prospectors finding gold

in america's backyard.

So, I'm headed to a place called happy camp.

They've got a very interesting story

and I'm gonna see if I can find gold.

North in the klamath mountains,

happy camp is a small town with a big history.

When gold was discovered here in 1851,

clashes between prospectors

and the indigenous karuk tribe

earned it the nickname murderer's bar.

But over time and millions of dollars' worth of gold,

the two sides learned to coexist

and the town was renamed happy camp.

So, I'm gonna meet the local prospecting club.

It's called the new 49'ers.

It's basically the same as the old 49'ers.

They're out here searching for gold

and they wanna change their lives.

- Good morning. - Good morning.

- I'm Dave. - Dickey.

- Dickey, nice to meet you. - I'm Dave.

Hi, Dave.

Is this your store?

It is, but inventory is low

because there's a lot of interest.

Wow. How many members you got?

A couple thousand.

- Really? - Yeah.

Dave mccracken set up

the new 49'ers prospecting club in 1986,

providing access to 83 miles of klamath river claims

to its members who, for many,

gold is their only income.

Are your members finding more gold than ever before?

Yeah. The river head, it's full of gold,

- but it's hard work. - Yeah.

Not allowed to have any motors

- within 300 feet of the river. - Okay.

But you could shovel in high bank and

yeah, with hand tools and...

Early gold rushers used basic pans

and hand-built sluices to recover gold.

Next was hydraulic mining

where miners would blast hillsides

with high pressure water hoses

to release the gold.

And then came dredging,

giant floating gold catching factories

that sucked up the gold rich soil from the riverbeds.

But because of historic over mining, since 2009,

all mechanically operated mining

in California has been banned.

I'd love to see

what's going on here in happy camp,

sign up as a new 49'er to go prospecting.

- Yeah. - Come on in.

- Pia, this is Dave. - Nice to meet you.

For just 100 bucks, a membership gets you access

to all the claims for a week

and you can keep all the gold that you find.

- All right. Thanks, David. - Yeah. Thank you.

- Pleasure meeting you. - I'm glad you're here.

Yeah. Thank you.

In recent years,

happy camp has seen some of the worst forest fires

and flooding in California history.

But from the disaster comes the potential of new gold.

You could see the trees all the way to the top.

They look like matchsticks,

and the underbrush still hasn't grown back.

And so for two and a half years,

gold's been traveling down closer to the river.

Wherever there's big rocks,

the gold settle around it.

As you could see,

somebody's been in here digging these out

and they've been in there grabbing the sand, panning it.

All these little things give you clues

that there's gold in this creek.

Hello.

- I'm Dave. - No way.

How you doing?

Hey, Dave.

- Eric. Yeah. - Nice to meet you.

It's, kind of, hard work you got going here.

- All by hand? - All by hand.

Wow.

I get to be the excavator and the rock truck and

you're the excavator and the rock truck?

She's the wash plant.

Okay.

Eric and Betsy bought a lifetime membership

to the club for 1,500 bucks,

which at today's price is less than 1 ounce of gold.

- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

Hope you don't mind the wet hand.

I don't mind.

And now they mine full-time to pay the bills.

What made you and Betsy come out here

and start gold mining?

Where do we begin, 2018?

'18.

We bought a little sailboat.

We set sail and we worked our way down Mexico.

And 10 days out, wind picked up.

That was really great.

Not for long.

- Yeah. - It kept going.

And then it just kept going.

And it kept going.

We lost our boat and absolutely everything

we had worked for, saved for between us

my gosh.

What do you do? You're broke.

You've got really nowhere to go.

So, to the klamath river and...

- And here we are. - Start doing it again.

- Yeah. - Start all over again.

- Yeah. - All over, yeah.

In a rented car with your suitcase apiece...

- Yeah. - -You know and work from there.

Yeah.

Much respect.

A lot of respect to you guys 'cause most people

would give up and quit and, you know,

look for some assistance,

and you guys are out here just doing it.

Yeah.

Maybe we'll get enough and get another boat.

Betsy and Eric use a simple non-mechanized sluice

to capture their gold,

washing the dirt across the small metal barriers

called riffles.

The heavy gold and dirt is caught in their grooves,

creating what we miners call concentrate.

And it allows us to wash it about a cubic yard a day.

But we're pretty choosy about the material we run

- because it's all done by hand. - -Yeah.

No sense in putting something through there

that doesn't have gold in it.

So, you're just trying to get in

and around the rocks and stuff?

- Yeah. So... - The bigger rocks?

If you look over here, this is what we're into.

Get down to the orange.

We're mining from there on up.

It's flood gold.

Flood gold appears when overflowing rivers

carry new materials from the hills.

The heavier gold sinks getting trapped by rocks.

But the lighter, fine gold

moves along in the strong current

and gets deposited on the banks

when the water level drops.

The orange layer is the original bank line,

meaning any material above it is new

and it should contain flood gold.

When you run a yard of dirt,

how much gold do you get you think?

Anywhere from $100 to $200 a yard.

We're not raking in these huge cleanups,

but our overhead is the same as it would be our grocery bill.

It's just physical labor

and we're being paid out of the ground.

Yeah, this is, kind of, your job, your business.

It's on a small scale, but it's mining.

- Right. - You're doing great.

Is there anything I could do to help?

- If I can dig... - that would be great.

This is old school mining for sure.

But the dog on it, they're doing it.

I got a lot of respect for somebody that bounces back

from such a devastating tragedy in their life.

I think it's awesome.

Another load of pay dirt.

Well, the good news is it keeps you in good shape.

- You betcha. - Right?

How many more years before you get that boat?

We're just looking at the ways we can,

make it more...

- For now, still... - more efficient.

We need to have more gold coming in.

But your own boss and no one to answer to.

Even a tough day is better than a day

behind a desk, I would think.

That's true.

Like it's your office.

Now we've sluiced the dirt into a gold-rich concentrate.

Haul that up to your gold room.

My gold room.

I wanna understand how they process it

to capture the gold.

So, this is how it works.

Feeding the wheel, a little spoonful at a time.

You rotate it at a nice, slow, even pace.

The wheel spins on the $250 hand-cranked classifier

that separates the heavier gold

from the worthless black sand

and catches it in the fine grooves.

And the gold will climb up.

It's like, waiting for the monkey to pop out.

Yeah.

Your gold will end up in here?

- Ends up in the cup. - Okay.

This painfully slow process

is repeated several times

until the gold is cleanly separated from the sand.

It's starting to show up in there?

Yeah.

Often taking them two days to process,

five days' worth of concentrate.

But in this game, Patience pays off.

- My gosh. - Yeah.

After seven days' work,

they've got about 1,000 bucks.

If you do the math, that's $52,000 per year

with no overhead.

But at any time, they could hit a rich pocket.

And that's every miner's dream.

When you're getting that kind of gold,

it's just too easy to keep going.

But feeding the wheel little spoonful at a time,

it's really slowing us down.

Their little system's working,

but it's so much hard work.

It takes so long to run it.

And it'd be nice if they got another 20%.

Maybe that is the difference

between them getting their new boat and not.

I've somewhat fallen in love with them.

So, my heart would swell if I can help them.

These little mining communities,

it's, kind of, almost like a family

or brotherhood as they help each other out.

And if there's any way I can help people

find more gold, I, kind of, embrace it.

I'm in California's mother lode country

where yesterday I met Betsy and Eric

who are trying to rebuild their future with gold.

Feeding the wheel a little spoonful at a time,

really slowing us down.

And I think I have something

that will increase their gold haul.

They're chasing flood gold

and it takes them a day or two to do the cleanup.

And this might just work.

What you got there?

I got something that I hope might help you guys.

- Have you used a shaker table? - No. Hey.

- See if... see if it works. - My goodness.

- That's fantastic. - Wow.

- Thank you. - Thank you.

You're welcome.

Costing just $250, this compact processing gadget

should speed things up.

And it'll also catch more gold.

There we go, Dave.

This is gonna be great.

As the wash concentrate

passes over the vibrating surface.

You'd teaspoon it on.

And then, you keep brushing your gold up.

The gold is separated from the worthless black sand

and is collected up top.

This is gonna be a real game changer for us.

Good.

I think we're both gonna be

fighting over who gets to run it.

- Do I get a hug? - Yes.

- All right. - Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Happy camp really is filled

with everyday miners, using basic tools

to make money in this new gold rush.

I'm here to see a brand-new miner.

He's got some crazy contraption.

I'm gonna go see him.

Hopefully, I can help him out.

Anybody home?

- Hello. - Hey, what's going on?

- Hey. - I'm Dave.

Hey, Dave. I'm Garrett.

Thirty-six-year-old Garrett Russell

came to happy camp from Chicago six months ago

to prospect for gold full time.

So you're mining down here?

- Yeah. - Are you doing some work?

Should we go look... Take a look?

Well, you won't tell anyone, right? No, no.

I won't tell anybody where you're at, okay?

- Okay. - Let's go take a look.

Okay. Let's go.

What do you got going here?

Garrett is mining the side of a hill

that was washed away by the recent rain,

and he thinks it's packed full of gold.

So this is a water anchor for,

like, a sailboat or something.

Everything is just hodgepodged together

'cause that's just how it is sometimes.

And using minimal equipment,

he's MacGyver-ed a unique suction system

to collect the gold.

You don't have a pump?

You can't use electricity or motorized,

you just use gravity.

Gravity works really well.

It creates water pressure.

Okay.

That should be good.

I've never seen this setup.

Using gravity,

the water enters the pipe at a high pressure.

As the pressurized water passes across the nozzle,

it should create a vacuum that sucks up the soil

and the gold.

And then, sends it to the sluice box below

where it's caught by the metal ridges known as riffles.

- Got your sluice box. - Yup.

I'm trying to get it to 10 degrees for the drop,

gotta level it up a little bit.

Yeah.

Here, let me you out.

Yeah. Thanks.

The angle of the sluice box is key.

A couple of degrees off and the gold will float off

the end and be lost.

There you go.

I've been doing this a lot of years...

- Yeah. - But I always liked learning new stuff.

I've never seen this setup, so kinda interesting.

How did you get started doing this?

I used to work in corporate finance.

- No kidding. - I was a senior financial analyst and

you were a senior financial?

Yup. And... You probably made pretty good money.

I was already at the time.

But you like this lifestyle?

- It's amazing. - Yeah.

I'm my own boss,

I'm out in nature, and it's fantastic.

Before, I was in concrete jungle

and this was when,

I was the manager of the man-planning for that company.

Now right there is a senior financial analyst.

- That's right. - But what I'm looking at

is a fellow gold miner.

That's right. Yeah.

- Welcome to the club, buddy. - I am, yeah.

So far, are you making any money at this?

It's about 100 bucks a day depending on the spot.

I'm not living like I was in Chicago,

which is just fine, but I prefer this, too.

And I'm frugal enough.

But you're also enjoying life.

That's... And that's what's cool.

You gotta enjoy life.

Awesome.

- All right. - Yeah.

Let's get this thing fired up.

Yeah.

Let's go rock and roll.

So are we seeing anything in the sluice?

- I got enough. - -I don't think you're sucking much.

So the sluice is working.

We didn't have any material going through.

So his nozzle thing is not sucking.

Spraying enough water,

but it's just not sucking the material out.

What happened?

I'm just gonna bring it closer.

You wanna just hook it into here?

It's all part of the fun.

Garrett's a really smart guy but sometimes,

you overcomplicate things.

Okay. That's secure.

He either doesn't have enough water pressure

or enough water volume

because I could shovel more in there.

I'm just watching you.

There's not a lot of material.

Have you ever thought of just shoveling it?

Sometimes, I think volume overtakes perfection.

Because you know what, at the end of the day,

if you added two more buckets,

you get the opportunity for getting more gold.

And those two more buckets are probably, like,

10 more buckets by how long it takes me.

- Okay. I'll do this. - Okay.

I know it...

A lot of miners will just be, you know,

shoveling and crawling through everything they see,

but I have a hard time doing that 'cause for example,

where this was, there was a anthill there, an ant's nest.

I wanted to start working on it

and the queen ant came out staring at me.

So I went and picked it up,

I was like, "okay. You know, I'm sorry, I get it."

And I set it up there and it just went away.

So in the next few days, they moved themselves.

I think it's important that while we're getting gold

to also care for those insects.

Okay. All right.

- Anyway. - It's your deal.

Save the ants?

That's definitely a first for me.

But ants can actually be a good sign of gold.

They like highly mineralized ground

where gold is often found.

Is that true here?

The proof will be in the pan.

It's the most I've seen in a few hours of running.

It's probably around $100 worth of gold.

By keeping things simple and adjusting his system,

in only three hours,

Garrett has made what he normally makes in a day.

So this is your money bank,

this is your bank right here.

And you can't fuss around,

you just gotta put the dirt into the sluice box.

So there's gold here.

The idea is you gotta keep it in there.

You know, your advice had been really helpful

and with all your years of experience,

I know it will make a big impact.

Garrett, I think he's wasting a lot of time

on things that don't produce.

We're here to find gold and at some point,

I think it's important that you just start shoveling the dirt, man.

The nice part is he listens.

If Garrett sticks to the game plan,

I guarantee he'll have gold.

- Thanks a lot, Dave. - All right, buddy. Thanks.

- Yeah. - I'm gonna head out.

Be careful on the hike up there.

All right. I will.

Gold is here for the taking,

so how can you find your own good ground?

I'm going to show you next.

We got gold.

I got one hang town fry, are you ready?

It does have a distinct smell to it.

Here in placerville,

there's a local dish dating back

to the first gold rush, and I just gotta try it.

And the way the story goes is that

there was a miner upstream, he hit it rich,

came to town, and he says,

"I want the most expensive meal you got."

They put oysters, bacon,

eggs, and cheese together,

and that's the hang town fry.

I've never eaten oysters for breakfast.

This is new.

I feel like a miner that struck it rich.

I like it.

So I'm up on one of the streams

that are feeding the river.

I'm pretty damn confident there's gold here.

I'm Dave turin and over the past week,

I've scoured northern California gold country.

Are you freaking kidding me?

To find the everyday people...

Welcome to the club, buddy.

Digging for dollars.

It's kinda hard work you got going here.

All by hand here.

All by hand.

Woo-hoo-hoo!

California gold, baby.

Gold.

But now,

I'm piecing together all the tips and tricks

to show you how to find your own gold spot.

This is kinda what I'm looking for.

As you could see, the fire was right above here,

so as the snow and the rain washes over that,

soil becomes unstable,

that bedrock could be carrying gold.

I got all the elements.

Now, all we gotta do is find the gold.

And to stack the deck, I'm calling in a ringer.

I think we're in the right spot. Nice.

Gotta be.

That's right.

Master sniper, Albert and his buddy, Chris.

I like it.

Look at all the exposed bedrock.

This is perfect.

And then, because of the violence of the water,

big nuggets are gonna fall right down there

and they're not going anywhere.

Mother nature at her finest.

Yeah. Ready to get in that water.

I think what I'd like to do is jump in with you guys

and start sniping.

- All right. Good. Nice. - Put our wetsuits on.

Nice. Let's go do it.

You look killer in that suit.

Dang.

Nice one.

Yeah. Easy right there.

Yeah. What's that? After there.

Step one,

shift the boulders that could've trapped gold.

Then fan the silt off the bedrock.

And if I'm in the right spot, find nuggets.

We thought there would be something there

because it was real deep, but nothing yet,

so we're gonna keep moving upstream,

looking for a choke point.

Hard work.

These guys are animals, though.

Look at him.

Man, is that what I think it is?

We've got gold.

I don't know how we're all gonna split it,

but we got gold.

Now, we could rock and roll.

Nice one.

We have about three of them right there.

See that?

Just pick it up.

I don't think that thing will suck it up.

Baby.

We got a nice one right there.

Good eyes, man.

In less than 20 minutes,

we've picked up more than $400 worth of gold.

Well done, boys.

- Nice. - Hey. Not bad.

Nicely done.

All right.

Turns out, nature's clues

did all point to a pot of gold.

This is a lot of fun.

We're out here in the great outdoors

enjoying ourselves, and we're getting gold.

Anybody can do this.

Couldn't get much better than that.

My time in California is up, but wow, what a ride.

On my quest to reveal how and where

every day people are finding gold...

Once you see the gold you know what it looks like.

My gosh.

I've helped recover

close to three car payments worth of gold.

On the day I found this one,

I wound up with about a half a pound.

You don't need a bunch of expensive machinery

to get on the gold.

I'm my own boss,

I'm out in nature, and it's fantastic.

Just an eye for the land,

a little bit of Patience,

and some good old-fashioned hard work.

When you're getting that kind of gold,

it's just too easy to keep going.

Four months later,

Jim's gold collection continues to grow

and he recently found a two-and-a-half-ounce nugget

worth $5,000.

It's been pretty, pretty dang good lately.

I got quite a bit the other day.

Albert's sniping holes

have turned up another $3,000

and still counting.

Thanks to the new shaker table,

Betsy and Eric's gold count is up 20%.

And the little tip I gave my buddy Garrett

I found a spot,

we went up there and found some gold.

I drew you a map and there's a snuffer bottle.

For me? Thanks.

- Yeah. - Cool.

Paid off big time.

I found about 6 ounces of gold.

That's over $10,000.

Way to go, Garrett.

It just goes to show, gold is everywhere.

So get out there and find it.

You never know, you might just strike it rich.

And now, it's onto the next adventure

in a backyard near you.