Modern-day prospectors with gold fever dream of hitting the motherlode.

Blue Bucket Mining Co.’s new owners, Shawn and Tina Vickers, are banking that these prospectors and rockhounds will be knocking at their door in Bend.

The company, which the Vickerses will take over at the end of August, was started in 1996 by Les and Carol Berg, who say their business grew tenfold through the years. They credit gold’s price, which was running about $350 per ounce 11 years ago. Friday it hovered around $657 per ounce.

“Oh you bet you can find gold out there, heck we know people who’ve found gold in the Tumalo Creek,” said Les Berg, who started prospecting as a hobby.

Though Blue Bucket Mining has been in four other Bend locations, including the Bergs’ home, both couples say the South Highway 97 location is the most visible.

“Location, location, location,” Shawn Vickers said from the company office. “Highway 97 is great because people see our sign, and this is a huge showroom.”

The location and the Vickerses’ passion for prospecting sold them on buying the business.

‘Mining the miners’

Professional miners work full-time looking for gold or precious stones, but the Bergs and Vickerses say most people can’t quit their day jobs to support their gold-fever addiction. Supplying miners might be where the real money is, said Les Berg.

“Did you know two of the richest guys in Nome, Alaska, are the guys who are selling all the supplies to the miners? Really,” he said laughing. “We call that mining the miners.”

Blue Bucket Mining also has an online store at www.bluebucketmining.com.

Shawn Vickers would like to broaden the online business, but he knows the competition is fierce.

“There aren’t too many brick-and-mortar stores like this one in the country, but there are thousands of gold-prospecting companies on the Internet,” said Vickers, who believes having both will increase name recognition.

Tina Vickers, who manages the store, says customers appreciate the shop.

“We can actually show them how to operate the equipment, like the dredging machine or the metal detectors,” she said. “Sometimes, if you buy it from the catalog or the Internet, it can be harder to understand how it works.”

From panning to high-tech

Les Berg and Shawn Vickers walk into the store’s demonstration room, where they routinely show customers how to pan for gold the old way and new way.

“This is called an automated panning system, you run it off a battery, and this wheel stratifies the gold through these channels — it’s the modern way,” Vickers explains. “This machine runs about $279.”

Then there’s the old way. Berg puts a small shovelful of sand in a pan he helped design, and swirls the sand along with water, waiting patiently for the gold specks to appear.

“Gold is 19 times heavier than water, so it will always settle down in these riffles,” he said. “You can start prospecting for $20. All you need is a shovel and a pan like this one.”

Blue Bucket Mining also carries a heavy-duty dredging machine for several thousand dollars.

Berg says he sells about three to five of the machines annually.

Shawn Vickers says serious prospectors could probably pay for the machine in two weekends in Northern California’s Happy Valley region, where people continue to find gold. The store also carries metal-detecting machines costing from a couple hundred dollars to several thousand.

“These are the new era of gold-prospecting machines,” said Les Berg. “Some of these metal-detecting machines can sense metal 3 or 4 feet under the ground.”

Some prospectors are going into old mines and finding what old miners could not see — hidden veins of gold, he said.

Legends and lore

Many of the legends surrounding gold keep prospectors in the hunt, so it wasn’t a surprise when Les Berg came up with a legendary name for his shop, Blue Bucket Mining Co., 11 years ago.

As legend has it, a wagon train on the Oregon Trail in 1845 left the main group in Vale to take a shortcut, only to get lost in the desert. After several documented deaths due to illness and lack of water, the wagon train stumbled upon the South Fork of the Crooked River and continued on to what is now Bend and up to The Dalles.

“After the settlers reached what is now Harney County, one of the adults looked down into the blue buckets the children had been playing with, and the legend goes they found these big gold nuggets that the children had playfully gathered in some of the creeks and rivers they traveled by,” said Tina Vickers. “They tried to go back and look for more gold nuggets, but they were never found again, and that’s the legend of Blue Bucket Mining.”

Les Berg says most area prospectors believe “buckets of gold” may again be found in one of the streams or rivers between Vale and The Dalles, and he says there’s been plenty of local historical research done in the name of gold.

Shawn Vickers says there are probably 20 to 30 legends of gold in the area, including lost gold from a heist in Prineville. He believes the legends, some detailed in books at the store, fuel gold fever.

Future looks golden

Both in their 60s, the Bergs say they’re selling their business to retire and spend more time hunting precious stones and metal. They own a 240-acre claim in Eastern Oregon, and Les Berg would like to work it more while he’s able.

“I can still, thank God, climb a mountain, I want to retire while I can still do that,” he said. “Sometimes we’ll be driving in our RV and Carol will look out the window and say, ‘I bet there’s gold in those hills.’”

Les Berg was careful about whom he sold Blue Bucket Mining to — after all, he and Carol call it “their baby.”

“There’s no way I was selling to a greenie, it had to be to someone who knew what they were doing, someone who’s knowledgeable about this business,” said Les Berg. “We knew Shawn and Tina for a long time. They also belong to the High Desert Treasure Club, which is how we started prospecting, too. They have three daughters and their girls may one day run the business. This is something they’re passionate about.”

Beyond the gold

The Bergs and Vickerses say their business is not only about the lure of gold, but the other rocks that glitter.

“Oregon is really big for rockhounds,” said Carol Berg. “Yes, when you see gold it’s a thrill, but you can also find Oregon sunstones, which can look like diamonds. They’re just beautiful.”

Other rocks found in Oregon include meteorites, thunder eggs and agates.

Finding gold is always exciting, but the real treasure is being outdoors, says Les Berg, or just having an adventure with your family.