News
Dakota Fred visits Bottineau
Scott Wagar
01/28/2014
Dakota Fred was in Bottineau on Saturday morning to do a meet and greet with individuals from the area and to promote his merchandise in association with Pride Dairy and MoJo Roast.
Dakota Fred is known as a reality television star from the hit show “Gold Rush” on the Discovery Channel that follows gold miners that mine for gold placer deposits in Alaska, the Klondike and Guyana, Africa.
Over the past four seasons of the show, people have been able to see Dakota Fred and his son mine for gold in Alaska.
On Satureday, Dakota Fred filled Pride Dairy to its capacity to meet local people. He also introduced a new product line for Pride Dairy and MoJo Roast which he is in partnership with.
“I like supporting local businesses,” Dakota Fred said. “Pride Dairy is a local entity and I like to be associated with Pride Dairy, along with MoJo Roast, which is owned and operated by Jo Khalifa, who makes coffee for me for my coffee business. Jo is a fireball and she wanted to promote everybody’s brands today.”
Shelly Spang of Pride Dairy stated that the new line consists of Pride Dairy products and coffee created by Khalifa in association with Dakota Fred.
“MoJo Roast is making coffee for Dakota Fred called Porcupine Creek,” said Spang of Pride Dairy. “We are using the Porcupine Creek coffee to make our new ice and blended coffees. We will also sell Porcupine Creek coffee at Pride, as well as other roasted coffee from MoJo.”
One of the coffee blended drinks Pride Dairy has created includes a Caramel Gold Digger blended coffee drink.
At Saturday’s event, which individuals filled to Pride Dairy’s capacity, the dairy had a contest where people could sample a new Pride creation with Porcupine Creek coffee and suggest a name for the drink. The name chosen was Dakota Sluice.
Dakota Fred’s real name is Fred Hurt, who is a resident of Minot.
Hurt was born and raised in south Texas. He spent the majority of his working life in construction, doing such jobs as a commercial driver in the Gulf of Mexico, along with underwater construction, demolition and salvage.
He eventually started his own construction business and operated it for close to 25 years when he made the decision to retire.
However, his retirement soon ended when his son-in-law, who lives in Minot, called him and asked Hurt if he wanted to do some gold mining. Hurt agreed and moved to Minot and started a new adventure in his life.
Today, Dakota Fred, at 70, is known as one of the great gold miners in the world, and he has also seen great success in “Gold Rush.”
Since becoming a member of the “Gold Rush” show, Dakota Fred has gather a great following of fans from around the world; but, for him, all his fame from the show hasn’t affected him one bit.
“To me, I’m just Freddie, and I am a regular guy” he said. “I am a people person, I like to meet all kinds of people and just talk with them.”
On Saturday, Dakota Fred did just that at Pride when he spent over five hours talking with fans and having a fun time with them as he signed autographs and took pictures with them.
On Friday evening, he flew into Minot from Washington, D.C. from filming the after show, “The Dirt,” for season four of “Gold Rush.”
He also met with the producers of the show about season five. Dakota Fred stated that individuals can expect great things once filming starts.
“It’s going to be off the chart with what we are going to be doing,” Dakota Fred said.
Jeff Beyer, owner and operator of Pride Dairy, said that he is pleased to have Dakota Fred in his business.
“This is tremendous,” Beyer said. “To have Dakota Fred come to our little creamery is an honor for us.”
For Beyer and Dakota Fred, they have one thing in common that they are both very proud of, because both of them were milkmen in their first jobs in life.
Delivering milk must be a good place to start because today both Beyer and Dakota Fred have gone on to do great things in life, which showed with the meet and greet in Bottineau.