With 10 years and 12 full seasons under its belt, the Discovery Channel series “Gold Rush” has become one of the company’s most profitable and long-running projects. However, to truly grasp the impressive scale of the gold mining reality series, one also has to look at its litany of spin-offs and specials. Chief among these adjacent series is certainly “Gold Rush: Dave Turin’s Lost Mine,” which follows a former member of Todd Hoffman’s crew, Dave Turin, as he prospects and mines his own claims with his own team.
The series started in 2019 after both Turin and Hoffman departed the original “Gold Rush” after Season 8. Today, “Dave Turin’s Lost Mine” has three seasons and 44 episodes to speak of. However, not all of them are quite as entertaining as the others. That being said, the best episode of “Dave Turin’s Lost Mine” (at least, the best according to IMDb) has a pretty good reason for being so highly rated.
Good Man Down is one of Gold Rush’s most tragic episodes
Technically, there are two episodes of “Dave Turin’s Lost Mine” that share the “highest-rated” title on IMDb. Both of these episodes boast a score of 7.8 out of 10, though for different reasons. The first is the Season 3 premiere, “The Million Dollar Claim,” in which Dave Turin’s Alaska team waits out the pandemic hold by searching for other prospects in abandoned mines in other states.
Perhaps the more striking highest-rated episode, however, is Season 3, Episode 7, “Good Man Down.” This episode stands out even among mainline “Gold Rush” episodes for the fact that it is the first time that a crew member has died on site. Jesse Goins, who was found unconscious in the site’s gold room on August 18, 2020, was easily one of the most beloved members of Turin’s crew. The 60-year-old miner had joined the series partway through its first season, and Turin quickly gave him an esteemed position in the gold room. The aptly named “Good Man Down” captures the exact moments that the crew learns of Goins’ death and the fallout of the loss in the days that follow.
Considering how genuinely emotional this episode gets, it’s no secret why fans rated it so highly. If anything, it serves as a tribute to the life of a genuinely kind person who touched the lives of thousands everywhere through “Gold Rush: Dave Turin’s Lost Mine.”