Entrepreneurs find fortune in gold prospecting equipment

David Bjelland sat transfixed in front of the TV screen, cake in hand, shooing off his relatives as they tried to wish him a happy birthday. Recovering from throat cancer, he was not in the mood for a party. His nephew, Dave Peterson, sat down beside him and asked what he was watching. 

It was the season finale of the first season of “Gold Rush.”

“I haven’t been prospecting all year and this is my prospecting,” Bjelland told Peterson. “This is it, this is the finale, and I can’t hear!”

Peterson settled down and watched the show with him. As he watched, his interest in Bjelland’s hobby grew. 

“Let’s go out next weekend,” Peterson said. 

“I can’t, I don’t feel good,” Bjelland replied. 

“Buddy, I’ll carry all your stuff down to the creek, dig your hole, and carry it all back up. Let’s go do this, this looks awesome.”

Unknown to both of them at the time, it was the beginning of Prospectors Dream. 

The pair made a trip down to the creek with Bjelland’s old sluice box, and Peterson set it up in the flowing water. Bjelland took a look at it and asked, “What are you, stupid?”

Peterson, a trained engineer, was not. But he had put the sluice in the creek backward. 

Once they got that sorted out, they continued running dirt through the contraption in attempt to catch gold, and as Peterson looked down at their first run-through, he estimated 100 flecks sparkled back up at him. After a while, Peterson went to clean up the sluice, having to remove the box’s screen. As he tried to pull it off, it jammed, then popped free and headed downstream. Peterson waded after it, then went to clean out the carpet, spilling half its contents. 

“I’m embarrassed because I’m screwing everything up…,” Peterson remembered. “I look at him, and I go, ‘This thing is so hokey. The word ‘engineering’ needs to be taken off the box.’”

Bjelland replied that it was the best box out there. After cleaning up, the pair had about 100 gold specks — what Peterson had counted on the first run through. An argument ensued on the hour-long drive home, with Peterson sure that the sluice was losing gold. 

Thus began the quest for the holy grail. Peterson spent 2 and a half years buying every gold-catching contraption, modifying them, trying to find something that actually worked. Bjelland leant Peterson his garage to test his experiments. Peterson paid for his colleagues’ lunch to hear their ideas. Nothing was working. 

Peterson went on a hunting trip with a piece of reading on the hydrocyclone, an 1891 invention with no moving parts. Essentially, the cone-shaped device spins fluid downward, so that heavier objects sink and lighter ones are separated out. 

“A year later, I figured it out,” Peterson said. 

Peterson put together one last contraption of cream cheese cups, plywood, duct tape and cardboard. He tested it, running a slurry over it. Bjelland came out to the shop and saw the material spinning over Peterson’s invention. “Hey, it’s working!” he said. 

And in the spent material they were running through it, it was finding hidden gold. 

Peterson is a Columbia Falls High School graduate, and he and his brother Tim Peterson are now the heads of Prospectors Dream, a seven-figure business designing, fabricating, and shipping Dave’s patented Dream Mats from Tim’s property just off of Montana 206. Tim takes care of shipping, manufacturing and marketing and Dave works on new product development and distributor orders. Randy Knight is their super-shipper, Joseph Torgenson pours mats, and Nate Peterson does IT. Sales have doubled every year since 2020. 

Dave’s sluice looks something like a series of fleurs-de-lis, with divots that snag the heavier materials as they pass over. It comes with a 100% guarantee to catch gold. 

“Our dad used to tell us when we went fishing, ‘I’ll clean the smart ones, you guys clean the dumb ones.’ Then we’d get home, we’d say, ‘Aren’t you going to help us clean these fish?’ And he’d go, ‘Smart ones don’t get caught.’” Dave laughed. 

“Anybody can catch the stupid gold, but only a few people can catch the smart gold,” Tim said. 

No one has really been working on improving prospecting technology. The brothers compared their product to going from a wall phone to a smartphone. 

“We are getting reports back from people in Kansas, Ohio, Illinois, places that everybody says there’s no gold in, and they’re saying, ‘I’m finding gold with my Dream Mat in this creek,’” Dave said. 

With distributors worldwide, Dream Mats are sold online by Bass Pro Shop and Cabela’s and will soon be in-store. They sell on a myriad of online platforms, including their website. However, they try to keep their suppliers close to home so their operations can run faster. CMT in Kalispell makes the sluices and they hire local welders.

Prospectors Dream makes everything from a pocket-sized sluice to industrial mats, with the hope of one day infiltrating the commercial industry to help prevent the use of mercury and cyanide in third-world countries where gold extraction can become a harmful pollutant. 

Hunters and fishers can take their adventure sluice in a day pack.  While the Flathead River is protected from prospecting, the Libby area is great for gold.

In the Bighorn River, Dave has had a trout-fishing/rafting operation call him to supply their trips with pocket sluices. Even if they can’t get a fish, they can find flood gold. 

“Our equipment is competing against fishing on the No. 1 trout stream in the United States. That’s how excited people get about gold — they get gold fever!” Dave said. 

The brothers hope they will continue to grow. 

“It’s been three years now since we built the shop, every investment is a chance, but if you put an investment into yourself and into other people, you’re going to reap a harvest,” Tim said. 

Prospectors Dream products can be viewed online at https://prospectorsdream.com/.