Original subtitles

I'm on my way to see my buddy, Rob Towner.

I really should be back up in Alaska with my guys.

But, something big's come up.

Probably the best piece of ground in the lower 48.

Pretty excited. Rob's got us access

to a big ranch up around Avon, Montana.

He's talked to the family, and they said come out

and prospect it.

It's real sensitive because I have to prove to them

that we're responsible miners.

You know, I do not want to miss this opportunity.

Hey, I got a voice mail from somebody.

It was there. We got it.

Give me a high-five, buddy!

Good morning, guys.

Well, I got good news.

The doctor signed off on Dave as far as being COVID-free.

He's able to return to the site.

However, he has a prospect in Montana.

So, he should be back soon.

- Good. - Good deal.

- Great. - Cool.

- We're on good gold. - Right.

- Plant's running. - Crank that sucker up.

All right, let's go get the gold.

- Let's go. - All right.

Dave's been talking about this family ranch

in Montana a year and a half now.

He's gotta check it out. But, right now

we gotta run this operation.

Let's do it, buddy.

Despite being three crew members down last week,

Team Turin had one of its best

gold weighs of this season.

53.4 ounces.

We're on the best gold we've been on all year.

We might see some really good numbers here

in the last few weeks.

We'll see with this week's gold weigh,

and if it's consistently over 50, I'll be happy.

If you pull 53.4 ounces in a week...

really keeps your enthusiasm up

for the ground that you're in.

By me handling the day to days

and taking on more of the responsibility,

it frees Dave up to handle the business end.

And look for better ground.

By rights, I should be headed up to Alaska with the crew.

But, for me, I've gotta go check this out.

I cannot miss out on this opportunity.

This is amazing, Rob. The fact that

none of this has been dredged.

Earlier in the year, Dave found exciting signs

at a secretive Montana cattle ranch.

Mining and ranching, a lot of times

throughout history hasn't gotten along.

- Exactly. - I trust you.

Go do your thing.

If we could secure that land, I think it would be

the season of a lifetime.

But, the ranching family

dealt him a disappointing blow.

It's gonna take more time.

Some time to get them used to the idea.

You know, I feel punched in the gut.

Call Dave Turin.

Calling Dave Turin.

Now, three months later...

...veteran Montana miner, Rob Towner,

secures a two-day prospect on the ranch.

Hi. This property has always excited me.

Could be the deal of the century, Dave.

Rob and I have kinda combined our efforts.

So, we've got five pieces of machinery in here.

I'm excited about it.

I think we're gonna find good gold here.

Rob and Dave race to Graveley,

a 23,000-acre cattle ranch in Western Montana,

just south of the legendary Drumlummon Mine.

An epic 1876 gold strike, which in today's money,

netted over a billion dollars of gold.

Historically gold rich, parts of the ranch

haven't been mined for over a century.

Hey, Rob.

Today, the property is owned and managed

- by the third generation of the Graveley family. - How you doing?

- I'm Shane. Nice to meet you, Dave. - Hi, Shane. Nice to meet you.

Thanks for having us out here.

Rob's told me a lot about this ground.

He's been, uh, itching and pretty excited

- about getting out here. - Yeah.

So, how many years has it been in your family?

Well, the ranch has been in our family

over 100 years.

Why hasn't it been mined?

We've had people who have come in,

and didn't do a lot of mining on us.

But, just gave us enough to give...

Put a sour taste in our mouth.

Kinda left us a mess.

You just can't trust any miner to come in and do it.

Miners and ranchers have long since battled

over the same land.

After the gold rushes of the 1840s,

hundreds of thousands of men headed west

to make their fortune.

Miners encroached on ranching property,

tearing up pasture to get gold,

causing friction between the two groups.

In 1884, Colorado rancher Samuel Derry

shot and killed claim-owner Major General Bearce

who was supposedly prospecting on his land.

Well, Rob and I believe in the same thing.

Put the ground back, to... You know,

better than what we found it.

And, that's what I do, is I always chase

these old mines.

And so, I'm constantly fixing up what they left.

We will reclaim, and we're gonna put it back.

You have to prove yourself. Your reputation's everything.

Start with test holes and stuff.

And, we'll see what it looks like when they're done.

- All right. - Okay.

I've lived on this place my whole life.

I'm third generation.

And I have a real love for the ground

and that means more to me than money ever will.

Dave and Rob have just 48 hours

to strike gold.

And prove to the Graveleys they can mine responsibly.

The fact that this has been in their family

for over 100 years,

and I get the opportunity to come in here and mine it,

feel like I'm on sacred ground almost.

Gives me a little bit of fear,

because I don't wanna screw this up.

Chris went to lunch,

and this is what I do every day.

Feed the plant for a little bit.

Newly-patched screens in the Eagle

and a large stockpile of pay

sees the crew run at full speed.

Beautiful day today, finally.

We gotta take advantage while it's here.

Oh, what the is happening?

No material.

What's up, bubba?

Just stopped beating.

I noticed no material going through the plant.

It's all right.

Before I even looked at it

I eased off to shut off the water.

And...

- Rocks? - You've got that.

Looks like a bunch of rocks. Uh-huh.

Yeah. It seems like it jammed up a little bit.

So, one of us is gonna clear it out real quick.

You wanna run it back down there,

and try to pump on idle.

Make sure you take a breath and stuff first.

Andrew did it the right way.

You gotta shut it down. You gotta shut it down.

You know. So he did fine.

You ready, Nater?

All right, Andrew. Go ahead, buddy.

To clear the blockage,

Nate bumps the conveyor,

rapidly switching it on and off.

What's up?

It's just the operatives head.

Lot of heavy material. It's kind of a wet, damp crap.

It packs in there real hard.

Yeah.

Yeah, I came and grabbed a scoop.

Turned around, no material coming off. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's had a lot of wet material on it,

and it's heavy.

All I know is, it's not feeding right.

And, the last time it fed like this

It was a tail puller.

I mean, he might be right. I'm not saying I'm right.

I just start troubleshooting.

This head crane here,

this was a high-grade hard-rock mine.

- It was 100 and how many feet? - 190.

At the Graveley brothers ranch,

Dave, Rob and Sloan Graveley

investigate the century-old mining history

on the 23,000-acre ranch.

Oh, you call this Tunnel Hill?

That's what the old-timers called it.

- Just found that out... - Oh, my gosh. Yeah, look at that.

All over the place here.

Holy cow!

This is what fed this pasture.

54 ounces to the ton.

No way.

They just went down on.

They said there are veins going everywhere.

They never went any other direction

other than down.

The late 19th century,

old-timers worked across the property,

from lucrative hard-rock gold in the hills,

to placer gold in the streams and riverbeds.

But, in the early 1900s,

Sloan's great-grandfather purchases the ground,

and calls time on mining,

leaving most of the land untouched.

Now, Dave and Rob must decode this massive area

based on any clues left by the old-timers.

Well, one place that you might consider looking

is just over here.

There's this riding club

that used to ride over the mountain.

And, while they were visiting, a lady got off her horse,

and walked over and she pulled a half-ounce nugget.

Sitting in an old-timer sweet-spot over here.

It makes you wonder why they left it.

A bear scare 'em or a outlaw, or...

Well, you got people just killing other people for gold.

Pretty much the Wild West, but right here.

Wow.

This is the cut that the sluice box sat in.

You can see this at the edge that they mined up to.

Yeah, it's pretty clear-cut.

You got hand-stacked rocks. Both sides.

This, to me, is good evidence of gold,

and that's all virgin. As far as you can see.

You know, it's hard to, hard to imagine that.

Do a test hole here? It'll be fairly shallow.

All right. Dig some holes.

Here I go. Time to get some gold.

Our first prospecting hole is gonna be right here.

So we're trying to identify where the edges are,

where they didn't mine.

You're getting into the bedrock.

See how it's sandy.

Well, this is decomposed granite.

Gold should be hanging, like, right in here.

So I'm gonna pan a little bit off of this, Rob.

- Get some heavies in there? - Yeah.

- It gets dense so quick. - Very dense.

Yeah, it'll sluice really good.

You get a few specks there?

Decent flake in there.

Oh, you son of a gun.

That's a nugget.

Well, that's a hell of a pan right there.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Seven, eight, nine.

- 10, 11, 12. - Yeah.

- Probably 20 bucks a yard. - Yeah.

You know what? You never see a nugget

in the first pan on a piece of property.

Yeah, that's what we're talking about.

I'm excited, Rob's excited.

But, right now, we just can't get ahead of ourselves.

We gotta take it slow.

Just relax. Take a deep breath.

And we need to do this right.

Big rock right there.

Let it run out real quick, some.

There's one rock out.

Now it's started feeding again.

At Glacier Creek,

the crew struggles with the material it feeds

to the Eagle.

See I'm evenly dispersing this out there right now, Nate.

I don't know what the deal is.

It's tail-running right now.

I don't understand.

It's not the material.

I keep calling it out all day.

Ugh.

I feel like I have some good thoughts and opinions.

And, actually see stuff happening, and...

I make calls all day. They're just not heard.

That gets frustrating.

I mean, on the back side of everything,

couple and everything's through, the belt's not slipping.

The jackleg's the only thing I think to settle down,

and you know, we did raise them up once a week.

Maybe it's making the rocks go to the front, the dirt in the back...

Yeah, I kn... I see what you're saying if,

if it's leaning to one side or leaning back, how...

things are not falling where they're supposed to.

Last time I looked, those rocks are going, getting piled up

more on your right side.

Is it leaning a little bit that way?

Ten-four.

We can try it real quick. Wanna raise it up?

I only know what I know.

That it ain't running right, you know?

I usually have a mark,

and I don't see my mark at all right now, so I know it settled down.

So, we can actually raise it up on the back.

Try to level it a little bit better.

As pay dirt continuously hits the Eagle's internal conveyor,

excess material falls on one side of the Hopper.

As the pay compacts,

it forces the rear hydraulic leg to compress,

and the Hopper to tilt,

eventually jamming the conveyor itself.

Nate's solution? Operate the Eagle's built-in mechanism to increase hydraulic pressure,

inside the rear leg piston, re-levelling the Hopper.

- All right, Andrew, I'm gonna go up with it. - Yeah.

Right there.

Arcs. This where it's raised at and lowered down that much.

All right, Chris, let's go ahead and fire it up, buddy.

It's four RPM right out of the gate.

Let's go!

Right now, it's feeding okay but,

I really wasn't expecting that,

but it's worth a shot if it makes it run different.

I guess really Chris is the only one to

- really tell us if it's feeding better. - Yes.

I told 'em it was breaking three days before it broke,

but nobody heard me.

I don't know,

I mean it's just frustrating.

I stay focused on my job, that's just putting rocks in the box.

Here we go. Let's load the gold-bearing gravel.

At the Graveley Brothers' ranch,

Dave and Rob start their first 50-yard bulk sample.

We're down on some really big boulders.

And, uh, we're starting to haul virgin-pay gravel, some of the

first that's been hauled out of here in a lot of years.

Kind of excited about this. Let's see what we got.

Here goes the load.

Rob's crew will run the dirt through his 10-yard-an-hour trommel.

Time to run a bulk test, here we go.

Go ahead and load it up.

This is the first time I've been around this plant,

we're just trying to dial it in.

Uh, it's a small plant.

It's very simple.

Just two motors, you've got a vibrating feeder.

Lot of water going in here, it just vibrates a little bit,

sends it down to the trommel.

Okay. Good to go!

- Hi, Sandy. - Hello, Dave.

How's the mining going?

Going good.

The first bulk sample is underway,

so Dave and Sandy Graveley

look ahead for the next location.

- We're right about here. - Why has that

not been mined?

Take a look at this photograph.

The town just kinda sat right here.

There was a town on all of this.

- Right. Yeah, over there, quite a ways. - I'll be darned.

That's incredible, though, the...

That's a lot of houses in there.

- It's no wonder they didn't mine it. - Yeah.

- How many people were there? - They say about 1,500.

- 15... Wow. - And, the whole area was about 5,000 maybe.

At that time, Plummer's gang was operating in this area, so...

I didn't know Sheriff Plummer was out this far, too.

It would have been a scary time to be around if you had gold with you.

William Henry Plummer was elected Sheriff of Bannack in May 1863.

And was quickly suspected of leading a notorious outlaw gang,

the Innocents.

Residents had no choice but to take action.

And so began vigilante justice.

Within weeks, the now infamous Sheriff Plummer,

and at least 20 of his gang were captured and hanged.

When your sheriff is the bad guy, you pretty much have to

- have the law in your own hands. - Yeah, yeah, you do.

- Yep. Yeah. - Yeah.

It literally was the wild wild West, wasn't it? - Yep.

American history was made right here, the mining, the ranching.

All that.

I remember this when it was pasture ground,

and it had all the foundation stones

from all the buildings scattered out through here.

So, you can tell that it was never mined.

- Good news for us. - Yeah.

Yeah, I hope it's really good news for you.

- Because then it's good news for us. Yep. Yep. - That's right! Yep.

In 1973,

we got a dollar for our cab.

A pound.

- A pickup was 3,500 bucks for a brand-new truck. - Yep.

Here we are in 2021, and we've got

$1.70?

- For our cabs, and a pickup's $70,000. - Right.

With the price of cattle, the fuel and everything going up and stuff,

that's kind of why we want to kind of search this out, too,

- is just to... - Yep.

- To exist. - Yeah.

Hopefully, we can co-exist, and everything works out good, 'cause,

we do consume land, but we can put it back.

It's a really beautiful place.

And I know they can put it back,

but it's still not going to be quite the same.

That's why I'm conflicted.

- You can kind of see this contour here. - Uh-huh.

If you could take and, uh, cut this corner off...

- Okay. - ...and test that,

- Rather than... - Rather than being out here.

- And destroy your pasture. - Yeah.

- All right. Thanks. - All right.

- Thanks for the history lesson. - Yeah.

This is pretty unique.

You don't find this in Lower 48.

You know, typically this would've been mined

with more modern equipment,

but, number one, there was a town here. Number two,

uh, this family didn't get along with mining.

And, now hopefully,

Rob and I can mend those bridges.

We can work in unison.

And, you know, we all come out of here

happy and hopefully, with some gold in our pockets.

There we go.

It's good.

While the crew runs the last of the pay from the first bulk sample...

- Just bring the ex in. - Great. Roger that, Dave.

Dave and Rob hunt for their next test location,

- You wanna give me some of that dirt and I'll pan one? - Sure.

Upstream from his first test hole, Dave has discovered a large meadow,

that was once home to a mining boom town.

Dave is restricted to testing just one small corner, but this could be enough,

to indicate the entire field is a huge source of virgin

gold-rich ground.

We're gonna do a couple pans,

see if we've got gold. We got some gold here.

See what we got.

- Can you smell it? - I can smell it.

It's really heavy on the bottom.

So that bottom part, I think is really enriched.

- Let's pan. - Boy, Dave, I think this could be some good stuff, man.

We don't get frick.

Yeah, a lot of different miners know the history of this ground,

and know the potential of it, but I haven't been interested just because we don't

know people's reputations. But so, 'cause they do have proved that they can put the

ground back to where it's usable for us.

- Nice. - Well, this is all virgin ground.

Sandy was saying there was bunch of buildings here, and so if we find gold here,

he thinks it should continue all the way across.

- That gold? - Yeah, that's gold.

- Yeah. Wow. - That's pretty good little chunk right there.

And there's more. Wow.

That's good-sized gold.

- Nice one, Rob. - We've got some smoking hot dirt here, bud.

Looking good, Sloan.

- Seeing some color? - Yes, we are.

Oh, yeah. Some chunky stuff in there.

Nah, that looks pretty good.

- Ready to run the plant? - Hell yeah.

We gotta kick this kind of stuff out. You think you're uh,

you think we'll be able to come back farther into the meadow?

Well, we'll have to wait and see what the pans out like

after you wash a bunch of dirt.

Rob's way excited. We're on good gold, he's like a kid in a candy store.

Problem is he wants to mine that whole pasture there,

and he needs to follow the rules.

- Gotta keep proving ourselves. - Yep.

It's all right.

Thanks, Sloan.

- All right, buddy, get it to the plant. - Yeah. Tick.

Got big colors, lot of finds,

it's gonna be a pretty good representative along this edge,

of what we've got to look forward to.

We've got a lot of acres sitting out in front of us.

If you look back at history,

ranching and mining don't get along.

And, it's the same thing in this ranch.

We've got to stay within the limits they give us, and that's the only chance

we have of mining here.

Nate, got a copy?

Go ahead.

Glacier Creek.

I just picked up about a three-foot plate,

uh, from the screens out of the pan.

I'm telling ya I just picked up about three-foot plate.

Why am I the one calling out that there's holes in the screen?

You think you'd be on high alert and check it.

I don't understand.

We're really gonna stay running, but

some of them big rocks coming out of there,

they're hitting the plate pretty hard.

No, that plate is a patch.

That we patched, about a two-and-a-half-foot hole.

That means those size rocks gonna be beaten on our smaller

screen, which will eventually give way.

This time's a little different 'cause we got

the metal plates up there,

throwing me off quite a bit right now.

Sounds like a tin can full of marbles.

I'm gonna take a look.

One bar already popped up.

I got to shut it down for a second, cut that piece out.

Nate's put some of these bars across the sides of the screens.

And he bolted it down, here and here, but all the bolts have all busted out.

And it's sitting like this right now.

Rocks all under here and this is flopping on the rocks.

This part's bolted down real well, checking one hole right here.

So, I'll just cut it off there and we'll just move on with life,

and we'll see how much longer

we can last.

Hey, we'll cut it off real quick.

Brand-new screens were ordered from the Lower 48 weeks ago.

That top screen's, it's beat to hell. The plates have

busted out of it by these bigger rocks.

All those small screens will wear out fast.

We kind of pushed our luck quite a bit.

Getting anything shipped, it might say three days. It might mean three weeks.

It's Alaska. It's on their time.

Hey, y'all, seeing if y'all delivered those screens yet.

- Yeah. - All righty. That'll work, sir.

- Perfect, thanks. Have a good day. Bye. - Thanks. You too. Bye.

All right, KC, I need you to get the red truck,

hook up to the goose neck.

And head to town,

- screens are gonna be there. - Yeah, ten-four.

Thank you, Morgan.

KC heads out to collect the new screens.

A 600-mile round trip to Anchorage.

It's a screen deck.

It's gonna take a beating, that's the first thing gonna go out.

The planning and the organization and the communication

need to be worked on if this thing is gonna go to the next level.

You're gonna have to watch this Eagle,

very closely. I'm watching it from the backside here.

Nate's watching it from the other side.

Chris is watching it from where he's loading.

Oh, dude. Hmm.

Huge.

- Look at the big rock fall down. - Damn.

One day we're going up there.

Big rock's coming off the tail now.

When large rocks tumble through the eagle,

they clog the sluices and wash gold out of the box.

And then we can push it and push it and push it

but as long as we're getting gold now I wouldn't...

I wouldn't keep questioning it.

It's a pretty good size haul.

Right now it's loose.

I mean there's nothing going down big at all.

They can overreact.

They see something, they think we'd shut down or what

but sometimes you'd keep running it for a bit.

There's time to shut down and there's times not to shut down.

It's just a ticking time bomb

but...

you know, you gotta gamble.

Hey, buddy, you gonna go down and get ready to fire up?

As Rob sends pay for the second bulk sample,

Dave quickly reclaims the first dig site.

How's it going, Dave?

Going good, Sloan.

Starting to, uh...

put the ground back.

Trying to reclaim these holes.

And, uh...

give your cows something to eat here.

It'll grow back by spring time.

So, yeah I think it's looking pretty good. What do you think?

I think it's looking great, Dave.

Thanks much.

We're being watched really close here.

We're... uh...

You know Sloan Terry is a good guy

but I guarantee it, if we make a mistake

he's gonna tell his dad and his uncle.

Every minute, every hour, every day

we have to keep proving ourselves.

Mining has gotten kind of a bad name.

And I'm trying to change that bad name by doing

above and beyond what is called for.

The only miner we had in here before

came in and he just left a big old hole for us to deal with.

Grizzly bars and everything like that all over the place, so.

Something that kinda turned us off from mining at that point in time.

We'll see what it looks like when they're done.

If we screw this up,

we're not gonna be here mining.

We don't know how long the screens are gonna last.

New screens still aren't here.

Supposed to be here a week ago.

Morning at Glacier Creek.

The Eagle's lower screen deck is on the brink of collapse.

Big rock are starting to come back

on the small tails here.

KC is en route with brand-new screens.

The crew decision?

Keep running the good ground.

We are wanting to try to make it by 5:00

and it's 3:15.

So, uh...

I...

don't know if we're gonna make it that far.

As we can see, this is wanting to go over a little hole.

The way it's headed over there on the very top.

Pulled over one of 'em but

it's really starting to break out.

It's just a matter of time.

Hey, KC, you got a copy?

Casey Morgan, you got a copy?

Still ain't hearing.

Still ain't in range yet.

Hey, Nathan, they're here.

Screen's about to fall apart.

So I went and got 'em.

Dragged 'em up this frickin' mountain

This is gonna work out good so I'm happy to see him.

I really am.

He's gonna hate going across that bridge.

Screens are here and it's a happy day.

We're gonna fix it and fix it right.

Now we can really push.

Casey!

Yeah, buddy they look right, man.

Let's get my strap.

We'll get it to set up there, man.

We're gonna pick that one up and just slide it right out.

Here we go.

First job for Chris, Andrew and Nate.

Remove the worn out screens.

Try and minimize downtime as much as possible.

Two or three hours probably due to the screen.

You're talking two or three ounces of gold right now.

But screens, they wear out.

There's no way around it.

- Go, go, go. - Ohhh!

There we go.

We're in business now.

Okay, I'm booming down to you, Andrew.

We gotta get new screens in like we are.

So we can be more efficient.

Go and get that one off and I need a red rope back up, bub.

Right now we got all the screens out.

Everybody's putting their heads together, hands together

and we're making happen.

Chris is like a mouse, he can get in really tight spots.

So it really helps to have him come in there.

Helps put the screens in.

It saves a lot of time.

So we got bottom deck completely done.

Tight and ready to go.

Put the top deck in. Slide it in.

Now it might swing to us.

I am sure you're ready.

Right now we're just bolting it up

and we're ready to rock and roll here come real soon.

That just held up.

We got the screens, they're in. I'm happy.

All right, go and get ready, buddy.

Come on the water.

Don't leave it in idle.

Full RPMs whenever you're ready, Jason.

We got a clean box so we're ready to go.

It's very exciting we're up and running

and that makes me happy.

We got a few weeks left.

We just gotta keep on running.

We need at least 15 ounces a week.

I don't think we're tired.

This ain't the time to be tired.

This is the time to have that motivation.

You wanna hit that gold,

you gotta work your ass of for it.

I think we probably ought to call it quits.

We've run about 110 yards.

That's a big bulk sample.

Last bucket.

The prospecting team

finally reaches the end of its two day bulk test.

Final shut down.

One of the biggest bulk samples I've ever done.

And I'm excited to see the sluice box

because we saw good golden pans.

Yeah, nice job washing the rocks off, isn't it?

Does a real good job, yeah.

You seeing anything in there?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I'm seeing it up here

Pick her along side that rock there.

Right there.

Got some chunky gold in this.

That's all nice big stuff.

Looking pretty good.

Guess what? We found some nuggets.

That looks pretty good.

We find few more of those...

- Adding up pretty quick. - Absolutely.

All right, let's pull the mats.

- Okay. You ready? - Yep.

- There we go. - Oh! Dang!

- Check it out. - Look at that.

There's some gold right there.

That'll add up.

Oh, yeah.

- It's all around there. - Ooh! Dang!

That right there's some...

chunky Montana gold, isn't it?

This gold is impressive.

This is the real deal.

We've gotta...

clean it up, weigh it up.

Pretty excited.

Yeah. I'm excited.

- Yeah bud. - Good job, buddy.

While the team cleans up the gold,

Dave considers long term mining at the Graveley brothers ranch.

Every time you're on a prospect

you gotta go through the numbers.

What dollar amount does it take...

to make sense?

Good thing here is there's lots of virgin ground.

120 acres here could be...

anywhere from 8 to 12 years of mining.

That's just a small piece

so a huge pro is that there's a future here.

But then again it's gonna be tough.

We're, like under a microscope here.

We're gonna be watched.

Reclamation could be... difficult to accomplish

if I've gotta satisfy them

and their, uh...

you know, their requirements.

So if it costs more money there's gotta be more gold in the ground.

Another con?

The land owner royalty.

In Alaska I own that land.

That land owner royalty is coming back to me.

Here we haven't negotiated that.

If they ask for a 50% royalty, I can't do it.

I'm thinking...

we need about 20 bucks a yard in order to make money here

There's a lot of questions still to be answered.

There's factors here that could kill the deal.

Right there, they were sluicing.

And you can see where it could've been...

part of a sluice box.

I think this was one of the riffles.

Look how it's been worn down.

Back in the late 1800s

sluice boxes were difficult to transport.

The old timer solution?

Build them on site from easily accessible materials.

All the gravel goes over the top.

Gold's dense.

It falls down right behind here.

They'd clean this riffle out.

Rocks going over these will wear out pretty quick.

They probably had to replace these every couple of days

so that you had somebody out here cutting wood.

It's a pretty cool piece of history right there.

We're on probation.

It all depends on how we do.

If they're comfortable with us.

They feel like we're gonna do the right thing,

put their ground back.

I think we're in.

At the Graveley brothers' ranch,

having reclaimed the family's land,

Dave and Rob's cleanup

from their two day bulk test is complete.

- Hey, Rob. - Good to see you again.

- Check it out. - How you doing?

What do you guys think?

Oh, yeah, that's some good looking stuff.

Oh, well. Well it's all right.

120 yards is a good bulk sample.

Okay.

We never went into your pastures

but we stayed on the edge.

But I think it's still representative of what's...

what's left out there.

We'd love to see anywhere between $20 and $25 a yard.

We'll start to weigh and see what we get.

$20 a yard

is equivalent to one and a half ounces of gold.

Pretty chunky gold.

It looks good.

You hear that chink?

It's a clinker.

Come on.

All right. We're more than an ounce and a half.

Quite a bit left.

All right. Here we go.

Ah, there's some nice nuggets in there too.

Beautiful gold.

That's it.

There you go.

3.67 ounces.

That adds up to about $50 a yard.

That's double what we expected.

You've got good ground

and, uh... we're really happy with it.

It looks good.

We've shown you what we've done,

where we've dug

and now you know the value of your ground so...

What do you guys think?

A ranch is something that I spend every day on

and, uh...

The thought of it tearing up, it's just a...

It's kinda hard... hard to do, you know.

Well, I know reclamation is big to you guys

and it's... It's...

it's in our hearts too.

So you're proving yourself to me every day out here.

The one thing that, uh... you've shown us...

is...

you're gonna do what you say you're gonna do.

And to us that's...

that's very important.

And I've never seen a spot as good as this... anywhere.

And...

we're just excited to be potentially a part of it.

I think it's up to you guys.

There is value in it and, uh, so...

- it gives me something to think about. - Okay.

Now we're just gonna have to...

take some time and... talk it over.

No, you're not... You can't do anything until next year anyway

- probably, right? - That's right.

Kinda thought you guys...

- Montana winters are pretty tough. - Yeah.

- Yeah, well you got the winter to think about it anyway. - Okay.

You know, I mean...

Looks promising like you said, so...

All right, you guys.

All right, Dave. Nice to meet you.

Everything that you guys have done for us, appreciate it.

When the ground got put back,

you know... other than a little seed...

it looks just like it did before they touched it.

You guys think about it this winter. Thank you.

Dave seems like a real straight...

straight shooter kinda guy and...

good possibility we'll be doing some serious talking in the spring.

- I gotta head back to Alaska. - All right, buddy.

This is the best prospect I've ever seen.

Six months ago, I thought

that dream of finding gold in lost abandoned mines in the lower 48 was done.

But now... it's here

and it's up to the family.

If they trust us, we might be able to make a deal.

This...

could be our future.

But, right now I've got to put it on the back burner.

I've gotta go to Alaska and I've got to finish this.

On the next episode...

Full speed ahead and see what she does.

A crew under pressure...

Nate, we better turn this thing down.

Chris, we ain't shutting that.

...is increasingly divided.

If you don't appreciate me and don't respect me...

then we might have to move on

and that might be today.

Forcing a monumental decision for the crew's future.

He's leaving us.

What?