Original subtitles

There's gold here at the beach in Oregon.

Pretty amazing.

I've never seen anybody mining on the beach.

- Wanna see it work? - Yeah. Turn it on.

Look at that. Very nice.

And now it's just a matter of how much fine gold is in the sand.

By the time it hits this ocean,

- it's travelled a long way. - It's been beaten up,

- ground, it's turned into powder. - -Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's definitely the prettiest backdrop I've had

for panning out concentrates.

What an amazing opportunity for people to come

enjoy the Oregon coast

and bring your family out and find gold.

It doesn't get any better than this.

Gold is everywhere.

My god.

There's an estimated three trillion dollars

still undiscovered in america.

Woo!

And I wanna help you...

- Choose your weapon. - Find it.

- We got gold! - California gold, baby!

All you need is basic equipment...

You can get started with $15.

And the 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. A vacuum cleaner?

Everyday people are catching it.

That's insane.

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

Boom, baby.

Right here in america's backyard.

Gold is america.

It's shaped our nation, and its allure today

is as big as it was in the 1800s.

There's so much gold left.

Still people trying to change their lives with gold.

Whether you're a weekend warrior

looking for a few extra bucks,

or like these guys who've hit the golden jackpot,

you can find it too.

And without breaking the bank.

I wanna help people find some gold.

This is gonna be a great adventure.

I'm in my own backyard, southern Oregon.

People had been striking it rich in this state for 150 years.

Amassing an impressive eleven billion dollars of gold.

And that's not bad.

I've mined in 14 different states across the U.S.

But here, there are more places and ways

to find gold than anywhere I know.

So, let's go out and get some.

This is beautiful. Wow.

From beaches, to creeks, to mountains,

I am going to show you where and how,

with very little investment and some ingenuity,

you can join in southern Oregon's modern-day gold rush.

We're headed to meet a guy who actually gets in the river

and checks the cracks in the bedrock, any crevices,

and pulls the gold out.

If you're looking to start your gold prospecting journey,

there's no better way to get your feet wet

than in the shallow creeks of the beaver state.

First stop, white horse creek,

where all you need to do is go back to basics

for your piece of the American gold dream.

- Hey, Chris. - Hey, Dave.

Pleasure meeting you.

And miner Chris schekla has created a unique

and cheap way to do just that.

Well, what do you got going here?

This is a little hand held suction device I made.

There's a lot of bedrock down on the creek,

and I'm targeting bedrock cracks.

And I use this to draw all the gravel.

And then I put it in a gold pan, pan it out.

This is just a little bigger one? What is...

No, this is a viewer. Underwater viewer.

So, after I clean the bedrock,

I wanna make sure I got all my gold.,

and then you just look straight down.

- It has plexiglass on the bottom. - I see.

All homemade.

It's awesome.

You can reproduce Chris' budget-busting tools

with parts from your local store.

But tools are worth nothing

if you don't choose the right spot to use 'em.

Like, this bedrock right here...

- Yeah. - It's super solid and smooth,

and gold's not gonna catch in it.

- What about here? - -Yeah, it's all fractured.

Will you go into this, these cracks?

- No, we're gonna pop that whole thing off. - -Okay.

What is shining right there?

That's what I'm looking at. Is that what you see?

Come on.

You see that? I don't know. I'm just sayin'.

- It looks like gold to me. - It looks awfully suspicious from here.

And that's crazy.

Look at that beautiful little picker.

- Right off the bedrock. - Good job.

You told me right there!

Yeah. Clinker.

- Holy cow! - I like this place already.

Chris has done his homework and found a creek

flowing from a known source of gold.

The gold formed in magma deep in the earth.

As it Rose up through the mountains,

it cooled, creating veins of gold-rich quartz.

Erosion by weather... wore away the rock,

releasing the gold from the quartz

and washing it into the rivers and creeks.

Where the heavy gold is trapped tight in the bedrock.

The bedrock is an impenetrable layer of rock

usually buried under layers of dirt.

But in rivers like this,

the flow has washed the dirt away,

exposing the gold.

My god. Yeah.

There's bigger rivers that are with better gold,

- but it's all gravel, pretty much. - Yeah. Okay.

You know, or the bedrock is right next to really swift water.

And this just allows me to really target bedrock

because just about everywhere's been worked by now

- by someone. - Yeah, true.

And that's your best chance to find virgin material.

So here's why Chris has the spot.

Get your notepad ready.

He's got permission from the landowner.

The water's just right, not to deep or too fast.

It's downstream from a known source of placer gold.

And, the rocks have excellent cracks

for trapping the shiny stuff.

The gold came over this big piece, settled in here.

So, what we're trying to do is get this piece off

and then there should be a bunch of sand and gravel underneath here.

Yeah.

I wanna get eyes on it and see what's down there and what we wanna target.

Looks pretty good. Takes the reflection off the water.

It's awfully suspicious from up here.

I used to go across the creek to pick bedrock apart,

and I constantly had that gravel sitting down there.

I could never get it completely clean.

- Yeah. - -So that's why I started using these

- suction devices. - I like it. It works really good.

I mean, you're sucking that right up.

Made that little one to begin with

because it was, you know, diy, something easy to do.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then I ended up getting this to do more volume.

How'd you get into this, Chris?

About the time I was out of the military,

these, gold shows started popping up on TV.

And it kind of sparked this interest.

Did a little research, went to my local river,

and started finding flood gold,

and it's been gold fever ever since.

You were, Navy for how many years?

- Seven years. - Seven years.

Navy seabee to be specific.

Bulldozers, dump trucks, loaders.

- Now you're talking my language. - -Yeah.

I figured

I don't know if you know this but they call me dozer Dave.

Right.

- And you were deployed? - Three times.

One time to Iraq.

Well, I appreciate your service.

You know, my son was army so...

Right.

I got a lot of respect for you guys that

- I appreciate it. - Went and did all that.

Does this get you away from all that, kinda?

- I've been out for a while now. - -Yeah.

I run my own small business and I'm a father,

so, yeah, this is my time to decompress.

Yeah.

- Kind of nice out here, Chris. - It is.

Yeah, I've made a lot of memories out here panning,

- some solitude too. - Take your mind off of stuff.

You've got some nice pieces in there.

That's good, Chris.

Chris' homemade tools, costing less than a tank of gas,

has come up with the goods.

I like Chris. I like his style.

Very methodical.

You know, for a one-man crew, he moves some rock.

When I started doing this, I didn't know anything about it.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to figure it out.

And if I can do it, anyone can.

And I highly recommend getting out here and seeing the flash in the pan

and just enjoying the outdoors.

I am happy. Learned something,

- found some gold. It's a good day. - Yeah.

And the sun's out. It's bright.

Crevicing is a great way to find gold quickly and easily.

But the bigger the river,

the bigger the gold potential for the everyday miner.

I'm headed to the mighty rogue river,

which snakes 215 miles through Oregon.

Now, look at that river.

It's moving fast and deep.

But there's gold there for the taking,

if you have the right kit.

I gotta be honest. I've never done this before.

I've sniped, but I always had, like, a snorkel.

With the hookah, you've got air supply to your mask,

so you're constantly breathing fresh air,

um, and it allows you to stay

deeper and for longer periods of time.

Sniping is searching for gold in the bedrock of rivers.

But hookah diving is more dangerous.

So, I'm linking up with expert Tony Brandt,

who dives for gold when he's not busy

with his day job of restoring classic cars.

Nice car.

This thing's a beauty. What year is this?

1934. Packard 1108 twelve sedan limousine.

- Yeah, original to '34. - That is incredible.

So, you're gonna take me out sniping today?

Absolutely.

Now, you gotta tell me, what's a hookah?

I can show you over here if you wanna come see it?

For a long time they've had gas-powered ones,

but they're big and they're heavy.

And here recently they've started coming out with these guys here.

So, this runs off of just the battery?

Battery powers, yup.

- It's all waterproof and encased. - -Okay.

We've already hit all the shallow stuff that can be snorkeled.

So now, because there's no more gold there, really,

the hookah's where it comes into play.

It gets us out there a little further, gets us a little deeper.

- All right, now you gotta show me... - Yeah.

- What's in that pan right there. - Everything that's out

of the pan is everything that I found where we're headed today.

- No way. - Yeah.

That was...

Boy, that's a beautiful piece right there.

You see what that is?

- That's somebody's freaking tooth. - I found that down there too.

- That's a... - Are you kidding me?

- That's somebody's tooth? - That's old school.

- That's an old-school crown. - Look at that!

That's funny.

For 150 years, the rogue river has produced more gold

than any other in southern Oregon.

So, when you're looking for a spot,

head for places where big gold has been found in the past.

The heavy gold drops in the deepest and quickest part of the river.

So, we need to take the risk seriously.

- We're gonna get some gold? - -Absolutely.

- Hey, Mitch. - This is Dave.

Dave.

Tony's pal Mitch is joining us in case anything goes wrong.

All right, Tony, I feel like I'm going to battle.

The flow here can be strong enough

to fill an olympic swimming pool in less than a second.

So, it's crucial you're properly weighted down.

- And you can feel that? - -Yeah.

So, I got 55 lb. That's a lot of weight.

It's gonna keep me on the bottom.

And that way you can work, you know,

without floating up all the time, but yeah, it's heavy.

So, it should be on. Go ahead and give it a try

and make sure it's gonna give you ample air.

Okay.

A rechargeable compressor kit like Tony's

will set you back around $650 bucks.

It's slippery, be careful.

But the key thing when you're attempting

this dangerous type of prospecting,

is doing it with experienced divers.

All right?

Give me your hand.

- There we go. - That worked well, didn't it?

Coming up... Let's get it!

I show you what it takes to hunt gold

at the bottom of one of Oregon's wildest rivers.

- Well, how was that? - -Well, we found some gold.

Right on!

I think the best way is we just go straight down to the bottom right here.

- We're just gonna lay down, pancake out... - -Okay.

And we'll just navigate around from there.

Okay.

I'm in Oregon's rogue river,

showing you one of the many ways and places

to get gold in the beaver state.

On the hunt for big gold,

I'm using a hookah system that provides a constant air supply.

It means we can reach the bottom of this raging river,

where the gold is most likely caught on the bedrock.

I'm starting to get used to it.

But once you get used to it, you can work quite a while down there.

Those guys know what they're doing.

So yeah, it's workin'.

When you're reading the river,

what are you lookin' for?

- Bedrock has to be cracking apart. - -Yup.

It creates spots for that gold to drop down into.

Okay.

Any big boulders down here are gonna be good because...

Yup.

That's gonna act like a riffle in your sluice box.

And the gold's gonna fall out right behind it.

It's the same technique that Chris was doing in the creeks.

But this is the extreme version.

And at some spots on the rogue river,

hookah sniping doesn't require permit,

just a good dose of courage.

Dave's doing great. He's still down there.

He's enjoying himself.

He's doing good for a first-timer.

Well, how was that?

Well, we found some gold. Right on!

- That wasn't a bad last piece? - Pound it. Yeah.

You found a pretty good piece there.

Yeah.

This is my favorite little spot, you know?

It's a place where you get to forget about

- all your stresses. - Yeah.

I ran my business full-time for about 10 years.

And I was working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.

My whole life is I've worked really hard,

and I've been trying to slow down the past few years.

- Reset and rezero yourself. - You know it... yeah.

You're a lot younger than me. It took me longer to figure that out.

And now I'm like, "I wanna do things that I enjoy."

Yeah. Yeah.

Let's see what we got!

Some gold in there, Tony?

The little stuff adds up.

It's good gold.

It's just $10 of gold for less than an hour.

But doing this every weekend could bring in

$8,000 a year in extra income.

Even though I almost drowned

no, no, I'm kidding.

But this is fun. It's a great experience and adventure,

so I appreciate you having me along for the ride.

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

That was fun.

I'm glad you came out. I'm glad we did it.

- Yeah. - Absolutely.

So far, I've shown you two great techniques

to find gold in rivers and streams.

Whether it's gentle crevicing or extreme sniping,

southern Oregon's gold is accessible to everyone.

Now I'm gonna step things up another level all together

and go dredging.

And since mining can be a fun, family affair,

I recruited someone special to help.

- Let's get some gold. - Let's get some gold.

My 14-year-old grandson micaiah lives up the road

and he's joining me for the day.

Have you ever dredged before?

I have not, no.

Neither have I, so we're both rookies at this.

Micaiah has been joining me on mining adventures since he was just four.

And he's always up for learning new ways to put gold in his pockets.

He's a real chip off the old block.

Being with my pawpaw out gold minin',

it's just more fun than, like, being at a family dinner.

I can really just connect with him on a more personal level.

Watch out, little goats.

- Thank you. - You're welcome.

Don't see that very often.

We're in Jackson county to learn the ways of the forest

from one of Oregon's top amateur dredgers.

- Jeremy? I'm Dave. - Yes, how you doing, Dave? Pleasure.

Jeremy Martin's working high in these hills

on a creek that runs into the rogue river.

Heading upstream and retracing the journey the gold has taken

can be a great way to identify good locations to mine.

Dredgin' spot's right down the hill there...

All right.

And actually I could use your help if...

Sure.

You and micaiah wanna grab one of these pontoons.

And I'll grab the motor and we'll head on down.

All right.

You got it?

Easy.

God! That's gotta be 300 lb, caiah!

- Yeah. - Nice.

Wow, this is quite a spot. I love it, man.

I really enjoy being out in the mountains.

I like that attitude.

So the river actually comes straight,

and it dead ends up into this exposed bedrock.

And it takes a short bend, so this,

this is the inside corner here.

Like Jeremy, you wanna choose a section of the creek

where the water is forced to slow down.

Slower speed means less force,

which means anything heavy like gold drops to the bottom.

Jeremy's spot looks legit.

I bet you there's a bunch of gold,

and I'm really excited to find it.

Well, we'll start moving those big rocks.

All right. Here it goes.

It's one rock at a time.

You can pick up a used dredge for around $1,500 bucks.

But dredging is strictly regulated.

If you wanna claim a stretch of river and hunt for gold,

you'll need to contact your local government authorities

to make sure you have the proper permits.

Well, you know, this is a perfect spot for us to go and get suited up.

Yeah, let's put this in the water. That'd be step one.

- So, this is your suction. - Yup.

- The water goes in there. - Okay. Goes in.

- Shoots out there. - Through there.

And it comes out here at high speeds -okay.

Yup.

And when it shoots out there, it creates a suction on this tube.

Dredges suck up gravel by creating a vacuum.

Using a pump, water is sucked up through a hose.

As it passes across the suction nozzle,

it creates a vacuum,

sucking up gold and gravel from the riverbed.

The material and water

then flows over the gold-catching sluice.

Where the heavier gold's trapped in the grooves known as riffles.

- It's alive! - Yeah!

Right now, I got Dave and micaiah

cleaning up a section where I pulled out some good rocks.

They're doing great. And I love it.

Somebody else is moving rocks besides me.

This is a win-win.

Dredges are a great way to run a lot of material.

The bigger the dredge,

the more material, and the more chance of gold.

The box is clearing out, but I'm seeing some black sand come through.

I think we're good.

After an hour of dredging, let's see what we've got.

Well, if you wanna get that side, get that...

- Well, let's hope we find some gold. - -I hope so.

We just found some gold right now!

Gotcha, pawpaw.

When we pull it out, we'll take it up.

I've got some panning station up there

- if you wanna guys, you wanna pan it out? - Sounds good.

- That's on some good claims right there. - -Yeah.

Well, I did a lot of research.

You can stake a claim of land in southern Oregon for as little as $230.

What's your plan do you think? You gonna make a living at gold,

or you thinking about it?

- It's gonna be retirement for me. - Nice.

If I can find a spot that will pay me enough,

I would switch over professions in a heartbeat.

I see one right there. It's really...

We're seeing some gold, boys. We're seeing some gold.

My gosh. Holy cow.

Nice day.

With gold like that, for just one hour's work,

Jeremy could make a haul of $5,000 a week in this spot.

That's a picker.

First day dredging and to find that amount of gold,

that's pretty amazing.

You know what you're doing is pretty fun.

- Micaiah, what do you think, buddy? - That's awesome.

Just being able to go down there and do that for a little bit.

And come out with this, that's great.

Jeremy's done all of his homework.

And if you take care of the permitting,

if you claim these up,

you can go find gold in the streams in Oregon today.

- Micaiah, it was fun having you with me. - -It was.

- Once again... - thank you for letting me come down.

Every year it seems like you get a chance to go mining with us.

Yeah. And I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Coming up...

It's making all kinds of noise, Dave. It's getting crazy.

I show you where you can super size your hunt for Oregon's gold.

One of the first big nuggets that came out of the creek

- was a 57 ounce nugget. One of many. - What?

My gosh.

- I'm in southern Oregon. - A gold catcher's paradise.

Where the places and ways to find gold are endless.

The rivers here are quite literally running with gold.

But, if getting wet isn't your thing,

there's plenty to be found on dry land too.

I'm going to meet pretty well known metal detector.

I'm not a metal detector guy.

So for me to go out here and metal detect and find gold,

I'm really excited about that.

Josh bohmker and his wife, Sarah,

have been prospecting full time for the past ten years.

When you're metal detecting, does size matter?

- Sometimes, yes. - Okay.

Not all the time though.

After reading the rock, and speaking to local experts,

Josh and Sarah claimed this historic mine site.

After I started exploring,

I discovered that there's a geologic anomaly here,

- where it was a source gold situation. - -'Kay.

So up above us here, about, like 100 yards or so,

is where this bedrock ends.

And there's a t intersection with a fault.

And, my guess is, at least,

that that was the source where the gold was originally at.

And it flowed down the hill side.

Josh believes the gold source is just up the mountain from his claim.

The gold hasn't traveled far.

So it's retained its nugget form.

And it's those nuggets now making their way

down the hillside that you want to chase.

So why toss rocks? Is that just to get closer to the nuggets?

The nuggets in theory are going to be sitting close to bedrock.

Okay, yep.

And so we're removing a overburden, is what this is.

So we can hopefully get down closer to be able to reach them.

- Okay. - We've cleared off,

down to the mushy bedrock there.,

and that's where we found the last piece of gold.

Really?

- The nails that we find... - Yeah?

- They're square nails. - Okay.

And square nails, as far as I understand,

were discontinued around 1900.

You think this was actually worked prior to 1900s?

Yes.

Well, we've uncovered some ground here.

Might as well see what we found.

Metal detectors range in price from $100 to $10,000.

And they're the perfect piece of equipment for hunting nuggets,

hiding just below the surface.

Are you hitting something there?

Well, it's something. It's a target.

You wanna scrape some off there?

So when we first heard it, it was a much milder signal.

Yeah.

Um, and we're digging down to it.

It's making all kinds of noise, Dave.

It's getting crazy.

Come on.

One of the first big nuggets that came out of the creek down below here

- was a 57 ounce nugget. - What?

Not joking ya.

57 ounce nugget came out of this drainage?

- One of many. - My gosh.

Found in 1858, and worth over 70 grand,

if Josh is trying to manage my expectations,

he's not doing a very good job.

Still in there.

There's something buried in here.

It's kind of the hunt now.

- I think we got it. - Yeah.

It's right there.

It's on there.

Square nail.

- It is a bit of history though. - It is. It really is.

Some guy had to pack that up here, probably late 1800s...

Yep.

- To build his family a house. - Yeah.

And he dropped the nail, so we could find it.

Yeah, exactly.

It's been waiting for you, the whole time.

Waiting for me to find.

What keeps you going? What's your motivation?

Mining in general seems to create a direction in our life.

And if you can find some direction in whatever it may be,

- that's... that's worth a lot right there. - It is.

It's healthy for your mind and your soul and your body.

My father, he's third generation prospector miner.

So, about ten years ago,

I found myself, motivating myself

by looking towards not only my future,

but looking towards my children's future.

I somehow managed to talk Sarah into turning our lives into gold miner lives.

Sarah, you think he was crazy?

- Maybe a little. - A little bit?

But you had kids?

We had a kindergartener and a toddler.

And he decides to just pack up and go gold mining?

- Sold our house. - Sold your house? My gosh.

- So you bought a rv? - We had a school bus.

- A school bus? - Yeah.

- It was a great family adventure. - -I wouldn't change it.

- You're still with him. - We're here today.

- Good. - Exactly, yeah.

Giving up everything for gold is a risk I know well.

And it's that chance of hitting that life-changing payday

that'll keep you coming back time and time again.

What's the biggest nuggets you guys have found?

So, about ten years ago, my parents come up for a weekend, right?

And my dad, he dreads for a little while.

And he's like, "I gotta take a break, you know. Here, Josh. Take over."

So I hoped down on the hole, and I see something wedged in the bedrock.

- And he's what flopped out of there. - My god.

An unbelievable two ounce gold nugget.

Nice.

That is so cool. It's a great life.

You know, even if you find a nail, it's still a good day.

Yeah. I mean, it's a great day, exactly.

Coming up

I take you beyond the hills, into the gold-rich mountains of Oregon.

Visible gold right out of the source.

That really is a game changer.

That means there's gold down below it.

Well, we're about as far south in Oregon as you can get.

I'm showing you the people, places, and ways

to find gold, right in my own backyard.

And, if you ever need a little inspiration and insider knowledge,

the local gold shop is the place to go.

- Are you Shelly? - Yes, I am.

- I'm Dave. Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

- I like your store. - Well, thank you very much.

So have you seen, like, a renewed excitement in gold?

It's done really well. There's gold all around here.

Good.

Yeah. More than they want you to know about.

- So... - Yeah. I know, right.

- Would you wanna see some gold? - You got gold here?

- Shh. Don't tell anybody. - Okay. All right.

Pretty much what you're gonna get in our area is gonna look like this.

- Wow. That is beautiful gold. - Yeah.

You gotta tell me where that came from.

- No. - It's a secret?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Secret creek.

Can you

secret creek.

Shelly isn't sharing her secret spot.

But she'd put me on the trail with a guy who is.

Look at the devastation.

I mean, it just burnt this forest.

Thousands and thousands of acres.

Holy cow.

50 miles away, David bargelt's family

have been mining this remote mountain location for three generations.

When you're hunting for Oregon gold,

a safe bet is to head for the mountains,

getting you closer to the source of gold.

- I'm Dave. - My name's Dave too.

- Hi, Dave. Nice to meet you. - Welcome to frog pond mine.

- This is beautiful. - Yeah.

- How old is your cabin? - It was built in the '20s.

My folks and my grandfather purchased two hard rock claims in '58.

The gold is something I depend on to make ends meet.

- My best year was ten ounces of gold. - Wow.

David used to mine the gold and rivers on his family's claim.

But recently, he's discovered a new potential deposit of gold

that's so unique, I've never seen it before.

There's an ore body here that runs north and south through here.

And right here, it's 104 feet wide.

I've got a disseminated quartz scene down

here in the creek that I've been working on.

An ore body is a gold rich made of quartz.

Normally lying deep in the hard rock.

But here, part of a quartz bane is exposed at the surface.

That rusty colored dirt, that's that disseminated quartz.

Now, naturally occurring assets are dissolving the rock

and releasing the gold.

Meaning, we can easily dig it out

and run it through a simple gold catching sluice.

Quite a bane structure.

You can see the different layers here.

Pretty rare that there's this much acid that caused this stuff to dissolve.

I've never quite seen a bane structure

that the acids have taken out everything and broken it down.

Normally, accessing gold from quartz

requires tunneling into hard rock and dangerous explosives.

But it's also where you can claim the biggest rewards in gold mining.

The gold down below could be more concentrated.

If that was ten feet lower, it'd be solid rock.

But because it's at the surface,

mother nature has already broke it down.

And that's why we're using plaster techniques to get the gold out.

There's definitely potential.

Down below here are some of the richest creeks in Oregon history.

And we've witnessed it.

We dredged on a creek that's just downstream.

There's gold in the streams. Where did it come from?

Probably here.

You wanna run, David?

- I'm ready to quit. - You're ready to quit? Okay.

- You see any gold? - I see muddy water.

Muddy water?

We're not mining from muddy water.

Could we throw it in a bucket and take it up to the fire?

Yeah, we could do that.

I really like your cabin.

I like the fact that your dad, your grandpa, mined here.

That's pretty cool to me. That's...

Yeah, we've got some history here.

It's kind of what it's all about, right?

Yeah. My dad and my grandfather and my grandchildren,

all love this place.

And I just would like to really share it with other people.

- Yeah. What would your dad say now, like? - My dad would be proud of me.

- Yeah? - Because I made a living of it...

- Yeah. - You know, for ten years.

- Phenomenal. - I moved a lot of rock.

Yeah, yeah.

All right. Well, let's see what we get.

Couple of pieces up here.

Heck yeah.

I'm pretty happy with that.

Visible gold right out of the source.

- That's pretty good. - Yeah.

The potential income from hard rock mining could be millions.

But to maximize on a spot so close to the source,

you need to dig deeper.

Have you ever thought about looking for investors?

I thought about it, yeah.

'Cause to me, it takes a drill program from here.

Yeah.

You've proved there's gold there.

And if you could get a drilling permit,

and start drilling, I really think you got some options.

The fact that there's gold at the surface,

that really is a game changer.

That means there's gold down below it.

We didn't process very much material.

A wheelbarrow load or two.

And we've got a dozen little specs of gold there.

That's interesting.

You know, for Dave to start a drilling program,

it's hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But he can start building evidence to prove his case that there's good gold here.

Then he might get an investor here.

Coming up

I show you gold in a place that's beyond your wildest dreams.

Very nice. There's gold here at the beach, in Oregon.

Pretty amazing. It doesn't get any better than this.

The beginning of the Oregon gold rush started here.

There are more places to find gold in Oregon than anywhere I know.

But this is a new one for me.

This is quite a building.

- Original floor. Yeah. - Original floor?

The floor of this historic building is over a century old.

And after pulling up some of the floorboards,

store owner, Sandy Jackson,

may have made a fascinating discovery.

We saved the dirt one here.

You did?

People would have dropped their gold.

Josh, we gotta pan it.

And I do have couple of little, tiny pieces of gold.

That's fantastic.

From its mountains to its rivers,

Oregon's rich with places where you can find gold right now.

But my home state has won extra special spot that's blown me away.

There's gold, here at the beach, in Oregon.

Pretty amazing. I love it.

And it makes sense.

The placer gold carried in Oregon's rivers,

ultimately ends up here at the pacific ocean,

where it's washed up on beaches.

I've come to the most famous one of them all.

The incredible whiskey run,

where prospectors have been hunting beach gold since the 1850s.

You know, there was a town here with about 5,000 people, and they were on this beach,

maybe a 150 years ago, finding gold.

As early as 1852,

gold was discovered by a group of sailors on Oregon's wild coastline.

And now, historic rains over the past couple of years

have washed more gold onto the beach.

- Are you gannon? - I am.

Dave.

Gannon Smith has been hobby hunting beach gold for years.

With more than $2,000 recovered so far,

he's following in the footsteps of his grandfather,

who mined whiskey run in the 1960s.

I've never seen anybody mining on the beach.

Wat do you got going here, man?

Anywhere in Oregon, from the Eugene line down,

we actually have a lot of sand that has a lot of gold in it.

And what we're gonna do is, we're gonna use a gold cube system

with a built-in classifier.

Gannon's using a gold cube to separate the fine gold from the grains of sand.

A gold cube is a stack sluice system

that uses water and gravity to push material through each tray.

As the heavier gold is caught in the mats,

the lighter sand washes away at the bottom of the cube.

And I suspect a lot of the gold that we get is actually gonna be trapped

- in those first two nugget traps. - Right.

But, he'll need a supply of pipe water to make it work.

In Oregon, we can't run motors on the beach to get our gold.

So what I'm having to do is, I'm gonna take this piping

- and I'm gonna pipe water down the creek. - Nice.

And what we're gonna actually be doing is using a road cone.

- That's awesome. - This works really well.

That is minor ingenuity right there. I like it, buddy.

Motorized pumps are illegal.

So gannon uses the power of gravity

and some hardware store piping to create pressure.

Yeah. We got good water.

- Wanna see it work? - Yeah. Turn it on.

- Look at that. Very nice. - Yeah.

He's got it figured out, you know.

That drop is supplying plenty of water.

He'll classify. Fine to find gold.

And now it's just a matter of how much fine gold is in the sand.

If you wanna start feeding this thing, while I get more sand.

I can do that.

I am seeing gold on there already.

This top piece is just a screen. It just classifies it.

You don't want these rocks blocking up your sluice.

Your slack sand go down through this screen.

And then it gets trapped in these little grooves.

It's just a handy little tool. You can pack this in a backpack.

And take it wherever you wanna go.

A kit like this one is perfect for catching fine gold.

And it doesn't come any finer than beach gold.

This is the hardest gold you'll ever catch.

It's traveled the farthest.

This gold has moved hundreds and hundreds of miles.

And that tumbling action and water washing over it,

it breaks it into the smallest pieces.

If you're searching for this tiny gold, look for black sands.

Which beach gold usually runs with.

Also, search the back of the beach.

Often big storms push black sand towards the dunes.

Concentrating it into a beach mother load.

People don't realize that the Oregon coastline changes dramatically.

So I live up at the border of Oregon in Washington.

And I go to a lot of the beaches that are just

on the other side of the Columbia river.

Yeah.

And for a number of years, we were doing very well.

I believe my best trip up there was eight grams in two days.

- Wow. Nice. - And a couple of years happened.

Big storms rolled in.

It is been completely buried.

So this is the last bucket?

Last bucket. And then we can see what kind of gold we got.

Well, it's definitely the prettiest backdrop

I've had for panning out concentrates.

Pretty nice.

Well, this is some tough stuff.

This is some of the hardest gold I've ever panned.

I'm telling ya. It's hard.

So tell me a little bit about your grandpa.

He was a prospector out here?

He worked the same sands that we did.

Did you ever get an opportunity to prospect with him?

- Only when I was a kid, unfortunately. - Okay.

He died before I got back into gold mining.

Aw, that's too bad.

But he would have definitely enjoyed what we were doing today.

What do you think?

- I think that's pretty amazing. - Pretty good?

Yeah. There's a lot of chunky gold in here, actually.

- There is. - It's pretty good from here.

- It's pretty good for beach gold. - It's pretty good size.

From north to south, there's 360 miles of Oregon coastline

that could hold gold.

So next time you're out here at the beach,

instead of building sandcastles,

why not build a family legacy and start hunting for gold?

Well, gannon, this has been a pleasure. It's been fun.

It doesn't get any better than this.

We got gold, we got a sunset.

- And we got some whiskey run whiskey. - Get out of here.

Cheers.

- To gold. - To the gold and the sunset.

That's got a bite.

From the smallest creeks...

Holy cow. I like this place already.

To raging rivers...

We found some gold. Right on!

And the wild beaches of the pacific coast

I am seeing gold on there already.

There is no doubt that southern Oregon

has more opportunity to find gold than anywhere else I know.

There's a resurgence. There's more people out here

panning and, you know, sniping, and dredging than I've ever seen before.

I think they found solace and they found happiness out here,

chasing gold.

Since filming, Chris' underwater adventures continue to bring in the gold.

Jeremy's dredging...

Nice.

We got over a quarter ounce in just a few hours.

Has gone from strength to strength.

Well, I'm excited to see what this next year brings.

And Josh continues to find Oregon gold.

There it is.

Look at it. Nailed it!

Way to go, guys.