Minnesota Gold Miner In Alaska Gives Virtual Tour Of Equipment

Have you ever had a dream that seemed too out of reach? Maybe it was a career? One Minnesota man is following his dream of mining gold in Alaska. The Isanti resident, Jeremy Runyon, shared a YouTube video of his gold-catching boat and now I am fascinated!

Jeremy shared the video to a social media page called Pacific Northwest Gold Prospectors, where he was met with both supportive comments and some comments from online users that weren't as nice.

From what I could tell Jeremy and his crew, which includes his son, have a pretty standard coastal mining operation all set up on a boat. The operation includes gold sorting equipment, an excavator, and a giant generator to run everything.

Building something like a gold-catching boat isn't cheap, someone asked Jeremy how much the boat ended up costing him, and according to Jeremy's reply, the boat has more than $2 million put into it! That's crazy!

I reached out to Jeremy to see how last year went, and last year was more of a building year. This is what Jeremy sent me via Messenger:

We got the boat done and our testing done and got the boat to Alaska. We were set back 3 months waiting for a piece of equipment to be built. It's 100% done now, fully tested and ready to start mining as soon as the ice is out.

Jeremy isn't the first Minnesotan to make the trek to Alaska in search of gold. Steve Pomrenke who was raised on a dairy farm near Pierz took off for Alaska in the 80s and ended up having a VERY successful mining career, and now his son Shawn oversees the mining operation in Nome.

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In all the gold mining shows that are on TV now, it seems like you drop your bucket into the water, and up comes gold, but in reality, it's not that simple. Miners must follow other rules and regulations or risk terminating their mining rights.