MAN 1: Let the games begin!
MAN 2: Let the games begin.
NARRATOR: Near the coast of Frankfort,
Michigan, Kevin Dykstra, along with members
of his team, and underwater archaeologist Dr. Mark Holley,
are searching the waters of Lake Michigan for what they believe
to be the remains of a 19th-century boxcar
and more than $100 million worth of lost Confederate gold.
Last year, Kevin, Al, and the team
located what they believe to be a debris field.
Using specialized metal detectors,
they obtained readings, which indicated
the presence of precious metal, buried beneath layers
of sand and algae.
After checking their footage, they
noticed something strange and rectangular,
something which looked exactly like a bar of gold.
KEVIN DYKSTRA: We could be just one
or two dives away from seeing gold
on the bottom of Lake Michigan.
We can't wait to get back down there and confirm it.
Clear!
AL DYKSTRA: The visibility is great.
Typically, the visibility in Lake Michigan,
I'd say on average, is--
if you get 25 feet, you're lucky.
If you get 75 feet, that never happens.
So to have 75-foot visibility cuts our search time
down to nothing.
Everything looks calm.
Is it?
NARRATOR: Within minutes of entering the water,
Kevin, Al, and Mark see the structure.
KEVIN DYKSTRA: What I'm looking at
is something unlike any other shipwrecks that we've found.
It does not look like a shipwreck at all.
Doesn't look like any portion of a ship.
Heavy, wooden timbers that I would expect to see
in a railcar, very prevalent.
KEVIN DYKSTRA: I would not expect
to see a full standing boxcar at the bottom of the lake
after this many years.
I would expect to see basically what we see.
The walls are gone.
The roof is gone.
What we're seeing down here is what I believe to be the floor
structure of the boxcar.
NARRATOR: Could the structure that Kevin and the team
have found be the remains of the elusive boxcar?
KEVIN DYKSTRA: I want to just get down to that object
and clear all that stuff away and see what this is,
but I had Dr. Holley with me, and he cautioned me.
You can't touch anything.
KEVIN DYKSTRA: So I have Al with a metal detector
and he's going alongside of this object.
And my thoughts are, if that's the floor of the boxcar,
whatever containers held the gold have probably long been
smashed or long rotted away, so the gold could
be laying anywhere.
But there's a high likelihood that it's buried in the sand,
and we might not be able to see it.
NARRATOR: Although the team is not
permitted to dig on the lake bottom,
underwater archaeologist Dr. Mark Holley is able to fan
the sand away in order to see if something of importance
might lie buried just beneath the surface.
Ferrous or non-ferrous hit?
AL DYKSTRA: A metal detector doesn't lie.
I was getting non-ferrous hits there.
But whatever is there is deeper than what
we can get to by hand fanning.
That's where the frustration lies for all of us.
NARRATOR: Despite the possibility of precious metals
lying just beneath the surface of the lake bottom,
Kevin and the team will need more compelling evidence,
like pictures or video, in order to apply for the permits
necessary to legally dig down and confirm
if they have actually made an important discovery.
KEVIN DYKSTRA: So I'm trying to hold the camera
and get as much data as I can.
But really, I'm looking all around the outside
just to see if I can see a gold bar.
NARRATOR: For Kevin Dykstra and his team,
they may be one major step closer
to making a life-changing discovery of fortune
in missing Confederate gold.