‘Gold Rush’ Star Dave Turin Talks the ‘Jigsaw Puzzle Treasure Hunt’ of His ‘Lost Mine’ Spinoff

Gold Rush‘s Dave Turin may have thought he was leaving mining behind for good two years ago, but the promise of exploring abandoned mines dating back to the age of the California Gold Rush was too much for him to keep away.

Traveling the country to explore the history of old and abandoned mines, looking for one with promise to resurrect and make his fortune, Turin is putting it all on the line in the new Discovery series Gold Rush: Dave Turin’s Lost Mine, which premieres Friday on the Discovery GO platform (free to viewers with a cable subscription), leading up to a Friday, April 5 premiere on broadcast TV.

Speaking with PopCulture.com ahead of the premiere, Turin explained that after leaving Gold Rush, an overwhelming number of requests came in from all over the world from people asking him to investigate abandoned mines on their land and determine if there’s any value lurking in the depths.

“I don’t wanna boast, but they saw me as the guy with the common sense,” he told PopCulture. “You could talk to me; I was approachable. I got all kinds of requests.”

Looking into areas that had last been mined in the 19th century was a wild ride, Turin added, during which he and his crew had to determine if their modern equipment would be able to tap into an undiscovered cache or if the prospectors had given up due to a lack of gold in the first place.

“It’s a jigsaw puzzle treasure hunt trying to figure out, historically, why they quit,” the Discovery star said, adding that it’s a combination of intuition and experience that helped him make the final determination.

That treasure hunt brought with it a fair amount of danger, especially when dealing with underground mines, filled it crumbling walls, toxic gases and a lack of oxygen.

“When you go underground, there’s a lot of not nice things underground that present itself with the gold,” Turn added. “Me personally, I don’t like going underground, but I go under a little bit to investigate.”

It wasn’t always Turin striking rich for the people who had called on him for help, unfortunately.

“Some of them, I squelched their dream,” he confessed to PopCulture. “Some of them were hanging onto grandfather’s dream, ‘We’re gonna be rich!’ I’ve killed their dream that’s been going for two generations…and it broke their heart.”

Breaking the bad news was inevitable, however. “You can’t BS your way — I see a lot of BS in mining,” he said. “Gold brings out the best and worst in mining.”

Returning to these old mines has an added environmental benefit, Turin added, in that his crew was able to reclaim a number of the plots in an environmentally conscious way.

“I believe by bringing in history and bringing in real people who have a stake in mining, it’s going to be very interesting,” he told PopCulture. “We’re going to see generation of miners and the same place and families that rely on these miners.”

As for the team accompanying him on this journey, Turin said he selected people who would be able to truly embrace the journey as he was.

“We’re not the best miners in the world,” he confessed. “My philosophy was hiring people I like and trust and want to hang out with, so I put together a crew that became a family.”

“To assemble a crew of guys I picked up on the way and have them come together as tight as we did and as close as we did,” he continued, “I wanted to share that. It’s more than Dave Turin having gold in a pan, it’s a bunch of ragtag misfits. …But in the end, I would put them up against any Gold Rush team.”

All seven episodes in which Turin travels the country looking for a mine he’s willing to stake it all on will launch on the Discovery GO platform Friday, March 8, all leading up to the series’ broadcast premiere on Friday, April 5 at 10 p.m. ET.

Photo credit: Discovery