According to Georgia news outlet the Jackson-Progress Argus, much of the money “Dakota” Fred Hurt made mining for gold in Alaska was accomplished through suction dredge diving, when high-powered vacuum devices are used by a diver to suck up sediment at the bottom of a body of water in hopes of finding gold, per the Idaho Conservation League. On the occasion of Hurt and his son Dustin’s 2018 return to TV in “Gold Rush: White Water,” Hurt commented on resuming the difficult work at the age of 72, “saying it was quite the physical endurance for this old man.”

He told Alaska Sporting Journal, “I’d always done construction work I was a commercial diver in my younger days out in the Gulf of Mexico — oilfield diving and things of that nature. And I had my own construction business and that kept me in very good shape for pile driving and dock building and all that type of stuff,” he added. “When I retired out of that when I was 60 years old and went to Alaska, it was like stepping from one profession that prepared me for gold mining.” 

Hurt may have never anticipated spending his golden years searching for gold, and it wasn’t always as lucrative as he might have liked, but it was a new thrill “… getting gold is fascinating, Hurt told Alaska Sporting Journal. “Every time you see that yellow stuff in the sluice box or in your pan, let me tell you, it’s a thrill. I think it’s the pioneer spirit.”