Gold Rush (titled Gold Rush: Alaska in the first season) is an American reality television series that airs on Discovery and its affiliates worldwide. The series follows the placer gold mining efforts of various family-run mining companies, initially in Alaska, but then mostly in the Klondike region of Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. Prior seasons also included mining efforts in Guyana, Oregon, and Colorado. As of 2024^[update], the show has aired 15 seasons.

The show was named Gold Rush: Alaska in its first season, and featured six men from Sandy, Oregon, a small town 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Portland. Due to the economic downturn, the men had lost their jobs; they decided on an all-stakes gamble: travel to Porcupine, Alaska, to prospect for gold. Most of them had little or no previous placer gold mining experience and had to learn on the job.

The season was marred by equipment malfunctions and crew inexperience. The crew's initial plan to strip mine a site near Porcupine Creek is quickly disrupted in favor of Jack Hoffman's search for an ancient waterfall that he hoped could contain a large cache of gold nuggets. Halfway through the season, claim owner Earle Foster sends Dakota Fred, an experienced miner, out in an attempt to improve the site's efficiency. Despite late season heroics, the crew is unable to hit a rhythm and cover their costs. By the end of the season, the Hoffman crew had recovered 14.64 ounces of gold.

In season 2, with the show renamed Gold Rush, Todd misses a lease payment on Porcupine Creek, and "Dakota" Fred Hurt buys the claim from owner Earle Foster, not needing to honor the lease due to the missed payment. The season explores the Hoffman crew's new mine at Quartz Creek, in the Klondike region of Dawson City, Yukon, Canada, as well as "Dakota" Fred's operation at the site of the original Hoffman mine, Porcupine Creek, and Parker Schnabel's attempts to mine his grandfather's property at Big Nugget Mine.

At Porcupine creek, Dakota Fred focuses his operation around further expanding the original Hoffman mine. At the beginning of the season he removes all of the Hoffman's original equipment in favor of a different mining set-up known as a de-rocker, in an attempt to process dirt more efficiently than the Hoffman's were able to last season.

The gold recovered by each team for the season was:

The third season began in October 2012. The Hoffman crew returned to the Klondike to once again mine the Quartz Creek site but also brought on additional crewmen to simultaneously work another site in the area. However, with Hoffman having delays and equipment trouble at his site, they decided to merge with Dave Turin's team at Indian River. Parker Schnabel returned to the Big Nugget Mine site with larger and more efficient equipment, while "Dakota" Fred Hurt and his crew returned to the Porcupine Creek site.

The Turin crew mined 803 ounces of gold, earning them over $1.28 million. Incredibly, this was only 3 ounces more than Dave Turin predicted they would recover when asked by the executive producer on the Season 2 Aftershow. Parker and Dakota Fred mined 192 ounces and 163 ounces, respectively, worth over a quarter-million dollars each. This was a large success in comparison to the first season, where no team recovered more than 50 ounces of gold.