We're Tim and Dave Peterson, two brothers in northwest Montana. We make the patented Dream Mat, the sluice mat that catches more gold than other matting.
It started with a sluice set in the creek backwards
Dave's first trip to the creek did not go well. He set the sluice in the water backwards. At cleanup the screen jammed, popped free and took off downstream, and half the concentrates spilled.
Dave is a mechanical designer, and he had seen enough. He called the box hokey and said the word "engineering" should come off it. He spent the whole hour-long drive home arguing that it was losing gold.
Then he spent two and a half years buying every gold-catching contraption he could find and modifying them, looking for something that worked.
A Dream Mat sluice in the creek, September 2025.
Gold in the cells of a Dream Mat after a run. Nome, Alaska, June 2026.
Cream cheese cups and a wood stove
Most of that happened on winter evenings in a borrowed shop. The versions that failed went straight into the wood stove so nobody would see them.
Dave took some reading on the hydrocyclone along on a hunting trip. It's an 1891 invention with no moving parts, a cone that spins fluid downward so heavy material sinks and lighter material separates out. About a year later he had it figured out.
His last contraption was cream cheese cups, plywood, duct tape and cardboard. He ran slurry over it, the material spun, and it found gold in material that had already been run. The patent came through in October 2015, and the first Dream Mats sold in February 2016.
Simplified illustration of how a Dream Mat cell works. Not to scale.
The patent
A small whirlpool in every cell
Dave's patent is for a curved cell wall that turns flowing water back on itself, so it spins on an upright axis over a pocket in the mat. It's the hydrocyclone idea, built into a sluice mat.
Water runs across the mat.
The curved wall of each cell turns it into a small whirlpool.
Gold is heavy. It settles into the pocket at the bottom of the cell.
Lighter sand gets spun up and carried off downstream. There are no moving parts.
A regular riffle sits across the flow and rolls the water over on a horizontal axis. The patent lays out the problem with that: those rolls load up with heavy material and can throw gold out with the runoff.
We had the Dream Mat tested against a setup many prospectors use: expanded metal over miner's moss. Elkhorn Engineering of Helena, Montana evaluated both runs, and a licensed professional engineer signed the report. We commissioned the test.
Gold in the pan. Nome, Alaska, June 2026.
96%
Fine gold recovery with a Dredge Mat in a PE-certified test, against 88.4% for expanded metal over miner's moss.
5:45
Cleanup time in the same test, against 9:20 for expanded metal over miner's moss.
Up to 7 g
Nuggets caught on a Dredge Mat in the last four feet of Emily Riedel's dredge box, a section that normally recovers under 5% of the gold.
These prospectors run Dream Mats on their own channels. Watch the videos and see the catch for yourself.
Tested at our request
Emily Riedel
Captain of the gold dredge Eroica in Nome, Alaska, on Discovery's Bering Sea Gold, and owner of Bering Sea Paydirt
Dave asked her to test the Dredge Mat. She put it in the last four feet of her dredge box, a section that normally recovers under 5% of the gold, and filmed what it caught.
"The mat caught several nuggets weighing up to 7 grams in just a few dives."
Ohio prospector who has run his YouTube channel since 2008 and hosts Tuesday Night Hangout Live
Ed has had Dream Mats on camera since 2016, from a Buckabilly sluice built for the Dream Mat to his 2-inch Keene suction dredge and our Switchback clean-up kit in January 2026.
"As you know, we love our Dream Mats from Prospectors Dream."
Carries our Big Foot and Trek sluices with Dream Mats online. See it at Cabela's
Walmart.com
Find our 12x47 sluice on Walmart.com, sold and shipped by Serious Detecting. See it on Walmart.com
Ed Marvin, Internal Compass of NC and Misha Boylan are in our affiliate program and earn a commission on sales through their links; Misha also appears in our ads. One of X4PROSPECTING's 2022 videos carries our affiliate link and Amazon affiliate links to our mats. Stoney Creek Sparkchaser's 2024 videos carry our affiliate link and a discount code, and a giveaway prize on his channel was shipped by us. Emily Riedel tested the Dredge Mat at Dave's request; we sell her company's paydirt, and her store carries our gear.
A Dream Mat sluice at work on the creek, July 2026.
Who we are
Two brothers and a shop in Columbia Falls
We run Prospectors Dream out of our own shop in Columbia Falls.
Dave Peterson
Dave invented the Dream Mat and works on what comes next.
Tim Peterson
Tim runs the operation, from making the gear to getting it out the door.
Gold prospecting equipment made in the USA
Made in Montana
Dream Mats and the sluices, highbankers, hoppers and header boxes we build are 100% made in the USA, in Montana. These are Montana made products, and they ship from our shop in Columbia Falls.
Dream Mats go out to prospectors around the world. We've heard from people in Kansas, Ohio and Illinois, places everybody says there's no gold, who found it with a Dream Mat.
On the shop floor, June 2026.
From our customers
4.7 stars across 2,500+ reviews
We built the Dream Mat for weekend warriors and everyday prospectors. A trout fishing and rafting company on the Bighorn River once asked us for pocket sluices for their trips, so guests could look for flood gold on a slow day.
100% satisfaction guarantee, if you have any problems simply send us an email.
International Shipping
We ship to all 50 states and around the world too!
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Included with every purchase
A FREE year of The Dyrt PRO
The Dyrt is the #1 camping app in the U.S. for finding and booking campsites, with millions of camper reviews and photos covering tent sites, RV parks, cabins, and glamping. Every Prospectors Dream order now includes a full year of the PRO membership, normally $59.99, at no cost.
What PRO unlocks
Offline maps and campground database. Download everything and search for camps with no cell signal, which is most gold country.
Free camping map layers. Public land boundaries for BLM and National Forest dispersed camping, plus every U.S. RV park, campground, and state and national park.
RV Trip Planner. Routes built around your rig, fuel, towing, and how far you want to drive between camps.
Campground and gear discounts. Savings at over 1,000 campgrounds and dozens of outdoor brands.
🎁 How it works: place your order as usual. Your one-time PRO code is emailed to you separately after checkout.
