What Was Dave Turin's Job Before Gold Rush?

The guys on Discovery's hit reality mining show Gold Rush are no strangers to large sums of cash. When your life revolves around extracting one of the world's most precious metals from the Earth's bowels, you're bound to hit it big eventually. Series regular Dave Turin is no exception to this rule. In fact, his net worth is estimated at roughly $2 million.

That's not to say that mining has been completely easy for Turin and others. According to Turin's biography on the Discovery GO website, the miner has managed to miss the mark when it comes to bringing home any gold for an entire season. Since then, however, he has contributed to many huge scores as part of Todd Hoffman's mining crew. With all this success, it's hard to think that Turin wasn't a born and bred gold miner. However, for most of his life, he held a different profession.

Before he struck it big with the boys at Gold Rush, Dave Turin was part of a family business. This was no small-time shop, however. Turin went to college and earned his degree in Civil Engineering in order to help run the Turin Quarry in his home state of Oregon. This would make his career background more gold mining-adjacent than some of Gold Rush's other cast members, but it's still an entirely different ballpark.

As a civil engineer, Turin was more involved in the management side of operations as opposed to actually mining. This led to him being brought in as a consultant for Todd Hoffman's mining crew throughout Gold Rush's first season. Evidently, Turin did a good job because the crew offered him a permanent position, and Turin took it with no hesitation. 

Since then, Turin has parted ways with the rest of the Gold Rush cast, earning his own spinoff show called Dave Turin's Lost Mine. Turin's own show is currently gearing up for its third season, though it has been set back by the COVID-19 pandemic and the unfortunate loss of their crewmate, Jesse Goins.