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A truck barrels over butterscotch-colored hills, spewing a wake of dust clouds that swell but quickly dissipate, making it difficult to track the turns onto crude side trails. The truck reaches a wash and follows the low-lying land wiped clean of cactus during flash floods. Nothing’s out here except jack­rabbits and Joshua trees. And Dave.

The 66-year-old prefers to keep his last name a mystery, which isn’t surprising for a man living far off the grid, alone in the Mojave Desert near the Nevada-Arizona border. He has spent most of his six years here hunting gold.

Today, he has company. The truck passing Dave’s home belongs to a camp of about 15 weekend prospectors convening here from Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City to dig at their mining claim. They’ve brought contraptions fitting in the back of their cars: high bankers, dry washers, a gold cube and the age-old gold pan. All are designed to do the same thing: separate the gold — usually found here in poppy-seed-sized specs — from the dirt and rocks. It isn’t long before Dave, a 20-year prospector, rolls into camp on his four-wheeler, his usual mode of transportation after losing his right leg near the hip to a dump truck a few years back. “Just a mining accident,” says Dave, his silvery long hair and beard blowing in the breeze. “Or a stupid accident, depending on how you look at it.”

Dave recognizes many of the faces. The amateur prospectors are members of the Gold Searchers of Southern Nevada. They’ve staked about a dozen claims in the area, something anyone can do on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. With two-thirds of Nevada under BLM control, that’s a lot of land to choose from. A handful of prospecting clubs exist in Southern Nevada, and their member­ship numbers have spiked the past couple years.

“The price of gold has a lot to do with it,” says Janisse Ager, leader of the Nye Gold Seekers, which started three years ago with just 10 members. As gold prices have skyrocketed from $600 an ounce to $1,520, Nye Gold Seekers has increased to 500 members, adding six to eight new members a month.

She also attributes the growth to the recession and record unemployment in Southern Nevada. People are looking for money anywhere they can find it, even in the dirt. And 80 percent of U.S. gold comes from Nevada, according to the Bureau of Land Management. The United States ranks fourth in gold production — behind China, Australia and leader South Africa — thanks almost entirely to Nevada.

This reputation is because of mines, not individual prospectors who don’t have to report their findings. Several long-closed Nevada mines have reopened over the past few years because the price of gold has surpassed the cost of extracting it.

People hear all of that and think it translates to nuggets in their pockets, which might be why half of all the country’s mining claims are within Nevada. The state has a little more than 1 million claims. “Basically, they’re thinking they’re going to pick up gold off the hills,” Ager says. In fact, some are counting on it, hoping that digging for gold will pull them out of the hole they’re already in. But digging only goes one way. “Every time we go out, we find gold,” says Deanna Costen, president of the Las Vegas Gold Prospectors Association of America. “But it won’t even pay for the tank of gas it took to get out here.”

The established prospectors know their tiny operations won’t produce enough gold to fill their wallets, or even cover their costs, for that matter. Starting off will cost the novice a few hundred dollars in basic equipment: a high banker or dry washer. Travel and time are the quickly accumulating costs, making this not a for-profit activity but a hobby, especially for the recently retired. “I didn’t want to come to a complete stop because that’s how people die,” says 63-year-old Fred Josephs, a recently retired Caesars Palace stagehand. “You stay active doing this. You find muscles you never knew you had.”

Despite the grim reality, Costen says the past two years have been a “new gold rush.” People have even come to her hoping prospecting would pay their mortgage. And they won’t listen to reason. “They’re convinced we are finding gold. We just don’t want to share,” she says. “This gentleman said, ‘You don’t want me to find gold.’ I told him, as I do everyone, come out and see what you’re up against.”

A day of prospecting consists of first finding a drainage where gold — heavier than the rest of the soil — will settle. Then, you have to dig through the rocky dirt to the bedrock — about 5 feet down at this site — where the gold will stop because it can’t go any farther. Here’s where the contraptions come in. The dirt is sifted by using water and gravity, or just gravity.

The gentlemen soon realized it takes hours of back-breaking work to find mere flakes. “After a day of digging, he apologized,” Costen says. Some just have gold in their eyes, and only sweat will wash it out.

People think they’re going to get rich out here. I see it all the time,” Dave says. “There ain’t no secrets.” “And you ain’t going to get rich,” says another prospector standing next to Dave at the camp. “If a guy gets half an ounce a month out here, he’s lucky. You can find gold all over the place,” Dave says, pointing all over the hilly landscape, “but you can’t get much.”

Chris Gallien, digging down the hill from Dave, is quickly realizing that. “Got laid off at work. Laid on my couch for a year. Spent a few thousand in savings. Got pissed off,” he says. “Now, I’m here.”

Gallien and his friend, both Boulder City residents, have been out gold hunting five times now and admit they don’t have a lot to show for it. Gallien takes a vile the size of a AA-battery from his bag. It’s filled with water and a few gold flakes at the bottom. “That’s my claim to fame,” he says. “Not a lot of it. About $5 worth.”

They sift through two 5-gallon buckets of dirt in a morning, finding three specks of gold, each slightly larger than a few grains of salt. “It would be nice to have income,” Gallien says and pauses. “Someone’s finding gold. They don’t tell you about it.”

Nevertheless, he’s not as “pissed” as he was sitting on his couch all day. “Now that Oprah’s off the air, what’s a guy to do,” he jokes and then becomes serious. “Look — the purple flowers with the yellow flowers and red flowers all together right there. Beautiful.”