For the prospect of fun — Worland man’s hobby is prospecting for gold
WORLAND — West River Prospecting Supplies is a business born out of a lifelong passion for prospecting, mining and the history of those practices throughout the United States.
The company is based out of a little shed outside of Steve Brazelton's home on West River Road. The shed holds a neatly organized storefront for Proline prospecting equipment, and enough mining memorabilia to qualify as a museum.
There, Brazelton and his friend and fellow prospector John Rogers visited about their unique hobby, and followed that up with a live demonstration of prospecting that culminated in finding gold right from Brazelton's yard.
Catching gold fever
Brazelton has lived in Worland his whole life. He told the story of how he was born in 1959 in Worland's old library, which used to be the town's hospital.
"I grew up here, graduated from high school here, worked at a few different places, and I ended up being an auto mechanic pretty much all my life,” he said. “My last stint was 20 years at TR's Auto Repair, then I retired at 62 years old in 2021."
He made a living working as an auto mechanic, but somewhere along the way Brazelton found an interest that grew into his greatest passion.
"In the '90s I found a program on TV about gold prospecting,” he said. “I was very interested, and that's how I found out about the Gold Prospectors Association of America. It's out of California. I went out there a few times, I met them, and we went on prospecting trips across California and Oregon, and I was a member for several years.
“Then, I first tried prospecting on my own at South Pass down by Lander in about 1993,” said Brazelton. “I kept going back down there and made friends with some people, and found my first gold there ... It took me until 1998 to find my first real gold nugget right there in South Pass."
While Brazelton's love of gold prospecting grew, it expanded in new directions that he found equally enthralling.
"It just kind of blossomed from there; I became interested in any kind of mining and the history of it, especially the gold part of it,” he said. “And I learned a lot more about it. I've been to Oregon, California, Alaska and Arizona. And every chance I would get, I would learn about their history and go to mining museums. I've just got a real love for the history."
Now fully-engrossed into the world of mining and prospecting, Brazelton took his hobby to the next level around 2015.
"I started West River Prospecting in about 2015, and the products I sell come from California, from this company Proline. I sell common prospecting equipment like sluices and pans, and so out of this little shed here I am one of their distributors,” he said.
“I also started a prospecting club here around the same time, and that went on for probably eight years. We'd meet once a month at the community center and have an outing when we could,” added Brazelton. “Once a month we would go to a spot called Half Ounce Creek, it's in the northern part of the Bighorn Mountains above Lovell. We would have an outing up there, and we would pan and run the sluice box, and run a little dredge of the creek
“We had people come and go, and the club kind of disbanded a year or two ago; everybody had different ideas for it, and it kind of just dissolved,” he said, “but there's still some guys who go out prospecting with me."
Hobbyist prospecting in Wyoming
Rogers, who met Brazelton from his prospecting club, said, "A lot of people have that romantic idea that they're going to go out and find big nuggets and stuff like that. That's not really how it is prospecting in Wyoming."
"It's work,” Brazelton said. “It's something that, you know, you either like it or you don't. We've taken people out one time and never seen them again. It's very much a hobby for someone with special interests.”
Brazelton said the best part of prospecting isn’t the gold.
“It's fun to get the gold, but you're out there and you're with your buddies and friends and family, the kids and the dogs are running through the creek, and then you go back to camp and you have a barbecue or something, and you sit around and talk by the fire,” he said. “It's an outing where everybody comes together. It's not just about finding the gold; it's about being all together and outside."
As one of the few people who prospect gold for fun, Brazelton had a bit of a challenge ahead of him when it came to finding places close to his home in Worland to search for gold.
"We've kind of made our way in this hobby here by doing some research on the mining history of the area and talking to other people,” he said. “Of course, South Pass – I think everyone's heard of the gold there, it's well known. And Kirwin wasn't really known for gold, but it's mining, so everybody knows about Kirwin.
“But otherwise, I'm found pretty often taking my stuff to gun shows, and that's a good way to run into people with similar hobbies,” Brazelton continued. “I ran into a guy in Powell that had a prospecting club. We got to talking and he invited me to go up to where he prospects. I run into another guy, and he tells me about another place. So, it's kind of just word of mouth, how you find these places.
"South Pass is kind of where I go a lot. You can still find gold there,” Brazelton said. “And when we go someplace, sometimes we'll bring a sluice and run it on the creek. Sometimes we'll just go dig up some dirt from the bottom. But either way, we like to bring home some buckets of dirt so we can do some prospecting from home."
Following the interview, Brazelton and Rogers went just outside the shed where they had set up a sluice box with a chute pointing into a series of two tubs of water filled by Brazelton's garden hose. The tub farthest away was connected to a pump feeding the sluice. When Brazelton fired up the pump, it produced streams of water in a hopper at the top of the chute, and they were ready to begin the process.
Rogers held up a five-gallon bucket full of sediment harvested from their spot at South Pass, methodically shoveling mud into the chute. As it met the water, it separated the particles based on their specific gravity, with the heavier particles sinking to the bottom of the chute and the lighter ones washing out into the waste tub.
After a while when they had finished shoveling mud, they cleaned out the hopper, and they dug out a square of carpet that had sat in the bottom of the hopper.
The carpet fibers had trapped the heaviest of the particles; Brazelton took some water in a prospecting pan and rinsed the carpet into it. He swirled the water in the pan, catching the lighter particles in the water, then rinsed and repeated. After several rounds, he was left with only the heaviest particles: mostly iron, some other trace metals, a few unmistakable flecks of gold, and even a small nugget.
Finally, Brazelton extracted the gold from his pan by sucking it up into a clear squeeze-bottle, and deposited it into a small glass vial, a traditional method of storing prospected gold.
"It ain't much; after all that work, I think we came up with maybe 25 or 50 bucks in gold,” he said. “But we did find it for you, so I'm tickled."
Anyone interested in hearing about the history and stories of mining and prospecting from Brazelton or trying a new outdoor hobby can look for the sign for West River Prospecting Supplies about a mile outside Worland on West River Road or call Brazelton at 307-431-8798.
This story was published on June 26, 2025.