The father and son pictured right carrying the sieve and army surplus entrenching tools are visitors to Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro. This field has produced diamonds for about a century, and you're allowed to keep any gemstones you find. In addition to diamonds, this dirt is known to yield agate, garnet and amethyst, among others
Of course, you don't care about the history or the geology of the place. You want to know if you can find enough diamonds so you can tell your boss exactly what you think of him. What you want to know is your realistic chance of finding a gem quality diamond as big as your head in a casual afternoon of sifting through dirt. The honest answer is I don't know, but maybe I can gather some figures that will give you some realistic idea. These pictures were taken early on a Sunday afternoon in July, at the height of the tourist season. There were maybe fifty people digging. The park employee who took my entrance fee and stamped my forearm told me that two diamonds had been found that day, one about a quarter carat and one about a third.
You might also want to take into account that about half of the visitors are kids, and in a four hour visit they'll actually look for diamonds for about thirty minutes. Then in most groups there are some members who are enthusiastic about looking for diamonds and some members who are just indulging their boyfriends, who think this might be a cheap way to get that engagement ring. So just ballpark the numbers and figure that of every hundred visitors maybe twenty spend much energy actually looking for diamonds. Recent figures suggest that the field turns up an average of two diamonds a day, so guess your odds of finding a diamond at one in ten given that you are one of the visitors really looking.
I've visited the park about a half dozen times in my life and spent probably a total of twelve hours searching in earnest and I've never found one. Or maybe I have and just didn't recognize it. Many of the Arkansas diamonds I've seen on display just look like rocks to me. Like little yellow-brown gravel.
Of course, you don't care about the history or the geology of the place. You want to know if you can find enough diamonds so you can tell your boss exactly what you think of him. What you want to know is your realistic chance of finding a gem quality diamond as big as your head in a casual afternoon of sifting through dirt. The honest answer is I don't know, but maybe I can gather some figures that will give you some realistic idea. These pictures were taken early on a Sunday afternoon in July, at the height of the tourist season. There were maybe fifty people digging. The park employee who took my entrance fee and stamped my forearm told me that two diamonds had been found that day, one about a quarter carat and one about a third.
You might also want to take into account that about half of the visitors are kids, and in a four hour visit they'll actually look for diamonds for about thirty minutes. Then in most groups there are some members who are enthusiastic about looking for diamonds and some members who are just indulging their boyfriends, who think this might be a cheap way to get that engagement ring. So just ballpark the numbers and figure that of every hundred visitors maybe twenty spend much energy actually looking for diamonds. Recent figures suggest that the field turns up an average of two diamonds a day, so guess your odds of finding a diamond at one in ten given that you are one of the visitors really looking.
I've visited the park about a half dozen times in my life and spent probably a total of twelve hours searching in earnest and I've never found one. Or maybe I have and just didn't recognize it. Many of the Arkansas diamonds I've seen on display just look like rocks to me. Like little yellow-brown gravel.
The park interpreters will teach you how to convert a bucket of dirt into a pile of gravel and how to examine the gravel for the telltale greasy glint that distinguishes a diamond from the rest of the gravel. That's what's going on in the picture on the left.
A sign at the entrance to the park declares this to be the eighth largest diamond reserve in the world and that 471 were found in 1999, 506 in 1998. That's not the whole story on the diamonds, though. That only takes into account diamonds that have been identified by park personnel. There is another class of diamond hunter, local and regular, who doesn't report what he finds. I've met a few of them and they don't say squat about squat and they don't mix with the tourists and they're not going to tell you who their customers are and the answer to the obvious question is always, "Haven't found any today. Should have been here yesterday." It's a tight little club, but I've heard that this is typical of diamond trading on any scale.
You can recognize the regulars by their neoprene gloves and boots. They're the ones digging out a four foot hole. What little I've been able to get out of them is that some of these guys collect for their own enjoyment. There are also local people who collect exclusively Arkansas diamonds. They along with local rock shops and souvenir shops represent the entire market for these stones. Most of the Arkansas diamonds you find in souvenir shops are a little bigger than a pinhead and can be had for ten to fifty dollars.
On the other hand, this field has produced some whoppers. The Uncle Sam, found in 1924 was 40.23 carats. It was cut down to just under 20 by Peikin of Fifth Avenue, New York. There's a replica of the cut Uncle Sam in the park museum. It's about the size of a double chiclet. The biggest Arkansas diamond I've personally seen is a canary yellow wafer about the size of a shirt button.I looked up all the diamond finds reported in the Gazette over the first few years that the Crater of Diamonds operated as a state park. You'll notice that after a couple of years, diamonds smaller than three carats don't make the paper. Again bear in mind that frequent visitors who have learned to identify diamonds themselves will not always report their findings to the park staff. The valuations and comments are those of park geologists unless otherwise noted.
Note further that from 14 March 1972 to 11 May 1975 529 diamonds were identified by park personnel, of which 17 weighed over 2 carats. Within that time frame, eight diamonds over 2 carats were reported in the Gazette. So assume there were about twice as many big diamonds reported as you see listed here.
In the back of Howard Millar's Book, It Was Finders-Keepers at America's Only Diamond Mine, there are over twenty pages of names of people who found diamonds while Millar operated the crater as a private attraction. I'll leave that for you to look up.
DATE
SIZE
COLOR
HOMETOWN OF FINDER
QUOTES OR COMMENTS
7/73
2.57
Silver White
Arlington, TX
Est. $2K-$2.7K
7/73
2.12
Brown
Des Arc, AR
Appraised in NYC @ $12K+
9/73
2.00
Silver Cape
Tulsa, OK
"Prettiest diamond I've seen."
10/73
3.91
Silver Cape
Osage, OK
$10k
5/74
2.00
Light Yellow
Des Arc, AR
$2k-$3k
7/74
?
Light Brown
Fort Worth, TX
"He was kind of excited about finding that diamond and he took off before we got a chance to talk to him." Est. $4k-$5k
7/74
2.35
?
Huntsville, AR
Park System carpenter found diamond after rainstorm while on the job.
4/75
4.32
White
Rogers, AR
---
8/75
16.37
Clear White
Amarillo, TX
Found after rain. Size of wild pecan.
DATE
SIZE
COLOR
HOMETOWN OF FINDER
QUOTES OR COMMENTS
2/77
2.00
?
El Dorado, AR
Found during El Dorado High School field trip. Finder turned down an offer of $300 for his find.
6/77
1.99
Silver Cape
Nashville, AR
Found in dirt dug from the bottom of a 6ft hole.
8/77
4.25
Canary
Carthage, AR
Found in a bucket of dirt he took home with him to sift. This was his 13th visit to the park.
4/78
5.00
Silver Cape
Sulphur Springs, TX
Est. $5k-$10k This frequent visitor has found several diamonds over 1 carat.
5/78
4.20
Pearly White
Deer Park, WA
Found after rainstorm on her first trip to the park.
8/78
8.61
Brown
Hitchcock, OK
Found on first trip to park.
6/79
5.08
?
Black Canyon City, AZ
Found after brief period of heavy rainfall.
9/79
5.00
?
Springdale, AR
Found on surface. This person's 55th visit to the park.
6/80
4.25
Canary
Houston, TX
"He had it in a sack with some other rocks and didn't know what he had until the park staff checked it." Est. $4k-$5k
10/80
5.15
White
North Little Rock, AR
State Game and Fish Biologist found diamond while on the job at park. Est. $7k-$8k
DATE
SIZE
COLOR
HOMETOWN OF FINDER
QUOTES OR COMMENTS
9/80
3.48
Brown
Little Rock, AR
---
6/81
8.82
?
Shreveport, LA
"Looks to be of excellent gem quality." Frequent visitors.
6/81
5.15
?
Shreveport, LA
Yep, it's the same folks that got the 8.82 carat listed above.
11/81
6.07
White
Murfreesboro, AR
Refused offer of $7k. Local resident, frequent visitor.
4/83
3.20
White
Swink, Ok
Second trip to park. Est. $4k
9/83
4.71
Canary
Murfreesboro, AR
---
10/83
6.20
White
Topeka, KS
Diamond found perched on surface next to paved walkway.
6/84
5.58
Brown
Gretna, LA
His fourth diamond.
4/86
2.28
Brown
Rockton, IL
Found after a rain. Family visits park every winter.
4/86
7.95
White
Rockton, IL
Brother of the guy who found the 2.28ct brown above.
Don't be discouraged by the sparsity of reports of large diamonds in the mid-to-late 1980's. During that time mining interests and environmentalists were involved in a controversy that the papers found more newsworthy than individual finds.
DATE
SIZE
COLOR
HOMETOWN OF FINDER
QUOTES OR COMMENTS
5/86
5.19
?
Ardmore, OK
This guy visited 27 times in the previous year and found 22 diamonds.
3/87
2.58
White
Murfreesboro, AR
His 113th find.
8/88
3.76
Canary
Branson, MO
724th Diamond identified this year to park personnel.
10/88
6.30
White
Murfreesboro, AR
One of the few found with classic square bipyramid shape.
5/89
3.75
White
Clarksville, MO
Slightly less than an inch across, finder said it looked like ice.
1/90
2.60
White
Murfreesboro, AR
-----
1/90
2.07
White
Murfreesboro, AR
Same guy found this diamond and the one above on same day.
6/90
2.59
Light Brown
Morning Star, AR
Found by a participant in a "Save the Crater" benefit.
7/91
3.39
?
Nashville, AR
----
11/91
6.30
Yellow
Murfreesboro, AR
Heart-shaped
7/94
5.25
Yellow
Nashville, AR
"Lemon Drop" octahedral shape found by Crater regular, not the result of beginner's luck.
8/95
4.35
Brown
Germany
?
3/96
4.65
Brown
?, TX
Second trip to park.
8/96
2.24
yellow
?
?
10/96
3.22
White
Conway, AR
Finder was eleven year old girl.
3/97
6.72
Brown
Lockesburg, AR
Biggest diamond reported since 1991. Color of strong iced tea.
4/98
7.28
Pale Yellow
?, LA
Mother and Daughter on vacation found 5th largest diamond since crater became a park.
FREQUENTLY HELD MISCONCEPTION #1 -- THE MINE IS SALTED, NOT NATURALLY OCCURRING
One question that comes up is that of salting. Skeptical tourists raise the possibility that handfulls of cheap diamonds are scattered for guests to find just to keep the attraction attractive. The value of the reported diamonds is greater than the profit generated by the park. Add in the value of the unreported diamonds and any accusations of salting start to look pretty ridiculous.
However, in compiling the table above I think I've noticed a little puffery. It seems to me the Crater likes to make the papers a couple of times a year, and if September rolls around without two pressworthy finds by tourists, one of the local regulars will report a large diamond. There are about a half-dozen prospectors hunting 200+ days a year and several more working 100+ days a year. Surely this bunch comes up with a big diamond every month or two, and they want the park to remain viable as a tourist attraction, so they might report one or two selected stones in their own self-interest.
It was long assumed that chrome diopside was a necessary companion mineral to gem quality diamonds in lamporite soils. The absence of chrome diopside supposedly meant industrial diamonds only. Chrome diopside was not found in Arkansas, therefore educated geologists were often suspicious when gem quality stones turned up. The discovery in Australia of a kimberlite pipe with characteristics similar to those of the Crater of Diamonds lent credibility to the park.
(Note: In reading about the Crater, you'll see the words kimberlite, peridotite and lamporite used to describe the mineral composition of the soil. Chemically they are similar, but subtly different. I'm told by the staff at the crater that lamporite more accurately describes the dirt there, while the geological structure of the volcanic pipe is still referred to as a kimberlite formation. I chose the background color of this web page in an attempt to approximate the color of the dirt.)
That didn't mean fake stones didn't turn up from time to time at the crater itself and on neighboring land from time to time. What prankster could resist buying a handful of CZ and spreading them around? The park staff is pretty good at spotting them, and I've only found one recent instance where a jeweler identified a manmade stone that was found in the crater. In March of 1991, Brinda Golden of Rusk, TX found a 4.33 carat fake which got past the interpreters. It was later caught by Bill Underwood, a Fayetteville jeweler.
In the same area over the course of a few days two more fake stones of the same type were found by visitors, but were identified as manmade fakes by the park staff. A week later Bill Underwood identified a 4.13 carat 000 grade stone found by "a Texas resident... two or three months ago." That sounded to me like a panicky attempt to reestablish the legitimacy of the crater, so I left it off the list.
FREQUENTLY HELD MISCONCEPTION #2 -- AFTER A CENTURY OF SURFACE COLLECTING THE TOP LAYER OF DIRT IS PLAYED OUT
Another thing I kept reading in my research was a recurring complaint that the mining as practiced at the park just turned the top three feet of soil over and over and that this layer was all played out. While this seems to make sense on the surface (yuk yuk), and the objection has been raised every ten years or so ever since the mine has been open to tourists, the facts just don't bear out the assertion. The number of finds is directly related to the number of visitors by a ratio that hasn't changed much in fifty years.
In fact, several reports by geologists (John T. Fuller, 1908; Arkansas Diamond Company, 1920-1922; The USGS in 1942-1944; and Glen Martin, 1948) allude to the fact that erosion of soft diamond bearing soils tends to concentrate diamonds near the surface, in the top 20-40 feet of soil. It is typical of diamond bearing soils that the surface layers have a higher concentration of larger stones than deeper deposits. Any farmer will tell you that stones will keep percolating up through a plowed field generation after generation.
FREQUENTLY HELD MISCONCEPTION #3 -- ARKANSAS HAS THE ONLY DIAMONDS IN NORTH AMERICA
Arkansas has the only diamond MINE in North America. Sand-sized diamonds of industrial quality have been found along the Colorado/Wyoming border and in Minnesota. Diamond bearing soils have also been discovered in Canada but as far as I've read, none of the other North American finds have been mined. Of course, I've also read that people involved in diamond exploration are very secretive, so just because we haven't heard about any other formations in North America that have lots of gem-quality diamonds doesn't mean they aren't there.
Now for some history, and prepare yourself. It's one of those surreal Arkansas generation-spanning Wild West soap operas.
A sign at the entrance to the park declares this to be the eighth largest diamond reserve in the world and that 471 were found in 1999, 506 in 1998. That's not the whole story on the diamonds, though. That only takes into account diamonds that have been identified by park personnel. There is another class of diamond hunter, local and regular, who doesn't report what he finds. I've met a few of them and they don't say squat about squat and they don't mix with the tourists and they're not going to tell you who their customers are and the answer to the obvious question is always, "Haven't found any today. Should have been here yesterday." It's a tight little club, but I've heard that this is typical of diamond trading on any scale.
You can recognize the regulars by their neoprene gloves and boots. They're the ones digging out a four foot hole. What little I've been able to get out of them is that some of these guys collect for their own enjoyment. There are also local people who collect exclusively Arkansas diamonds. They along with local rock shops and souvenir shops represent the entire market for these stones. Most of the Arkansas diamonds you find in souvenir shops are a little bigger than a pinhead and can be had for ten to fifty dollars.
On the other hand, this field has produced some whoppers. The Uncle Sam, found in 1924 was 40.23 carats. It was cut down to just under 20 by Peikin of Fifth Avenue, New York. There's a replica of the cut Uncle Sam in the park museum. It's about the size of a double chiclet. The biggest Arkansas diamond I've personally seen is a canary yellow wafer about the size of a shirt button.I looked up all the diamond finds reported in the Gazette over the first few years that the Crater of Diamonds operated as a state park. You'll notice that after a couple of years, diamonds smaller than three carats don't make the paper. Again bear in mind that frequent visitors who have learned to identify diamonds themselves will not always report their findings to the park staff. The valuations and comments are those of park geologists unless otherwise noted.
Note further that from 14 March 1972 to 11 May 1975 529 diamonds were identified by park personnel, of which 17 weighed over 2 carats. Within that time frame, eight diamonds over 2 carats were reported in the Gazette. So assume there were about twice as many big diamonds reported as you see listed here.
In the back of Howard Millar's Book, It Was Finders-Keepers at America's Only Diamond Mine, there are over twenty pages of names of people who found diamonds while Millar operated the crater as a private attraction. I'll leave that for you to look up.
DATE
SIZE
COLOR
HOMETOWN OF FINDER
QUOTES OR COMMENTS
7/73
2.57
Silver White
Arlington, TX
Est. $2K-$2.7K
7/73
2.12
Brown
Des Arc, AR
Appraised in NYC @ $12K+
9/73
2.00
Silver Cape
Tulsa, OK
"Prettiest diamond I've seen."
10/73
3.91
Silver Cape
Osage, OK
$10k
5/74
2.00
Light Yellow
Des Arc, AR
$2k-$3k
7/74
?
Light Brown
Fort Worth, TX
"He was kind of excited about finding that diamond and he took off before we got a chance to talk to him." Est. $4k-$5k
7/74
2.35
?
Huntsville, AR
Park System carpenter found diamond after rainstorm while on the job.
4/75
4.32
White
Rogers, AR
---
8/75
16.37
Clear White
Amarillo, TX
Found after rain. Size of wild pecan.
DATE
SIZE
COLOR
HOMETOWN OF FINDER
QUOTES OR COMMENTS
2/77
2.00
?
El Dorado, AR
Found during El Dorado High School field trip. Finder turned down an offer of $300 for his find.
6/77
1.99
Silver Cape
Nashville, AR
Found in dirt dug from the bottom of a 6ft hole.
8/77
4.25
Canary
Carthage, AR
Found in a bucket of dirt he took home with him to sift. This was his 13th visit to the park.
4/78
5.00
Silver Cape
Sulphur Springs, TX
Est. $5k-$10k This frequent visitor has found several diamonds over 1 carat.
5/78
4.20
Pearly White
Deer Park, WA
Found after rainstorm on her first trip to the park.
8/78
8.61
Brown
Hitchcock, OK
Found on first trip to park.
6/79
5.08
?
Black Canyon City, AZ
Found after brief period of heavy rainfall.
9/79
5.00
?
Springdale, AR
Found on surface. This person's 55th visit to the park.
6/80
4.25
Canary
Houston, TX
"He had it in a sack with some other rocks and didn't know what he had until the park staff checked it." Est. $4k-$5k
10/80
5.15
White
North Little Rock, AR
State Game and Fish Biologist found diamond while on the job at park. Est. $7k-$8k
DATE
SIZE
COLOR
HOMETOWN OF FINDER
QUOTES OR COMMENTS
9/80
3.48
Brown
Little Rock, AR
---
6/81
8.82
?
Shreveport, LA
"Looks to be of excellent gem quality." Frequent visitors.
6/81
5.15
?
Shreveport, LA
Yep, it's the same folks that got the 8.82 carat listed above.
11/81
6.07
White
Murfreesboro, AR
Refused offer of $7k. Local resident, frequent visitor.
4/83
3.20
White
Swink, Ok
Second trip to park. Est. $4k
9/83
4.71
Canary
Murfreesboro, AR
---
10/83
6.20
White
Topeka, KS
Diamond found perched on surface next to paved walkway.
6/84
5.58
Brown
Gretna, LA
His fourth diamond.
4/86
2.28
Brown
Rockton, IL
Found after a rain. Family visits park every winter.
4/86
7.95
White
Rockton, IL
Brother of the guy who found the 2.28ct brown above.
Don't be discouraged by the sparsity of reports of large diamonds in the mid-to-late 1980's. During that time mining interests and environmentalists were involved in a controversy that the papers found more newsworthy than individual finds.
DATE
SIZE
COLOR
HOMETOWN OF FINDER
QUOTES OR COMMENTS
5/86
5.19
?
Ardmore, OK
This guy visited 27 times in the previous year and found 22 diamonds.
3/87
2.58
White
Murfreesboro, AR
His 113th find.
8/88
3.76
Canary
Branson, MO
724th Diamond identified this year to park personnel.
10/88
6.30
White
Murfreesboro, AR
One of the few found with classic square bipyramid shape.
5/89
3.75
White
Clarksville, MO
Slightly less than an inch across, finder said it looked like ice.
1/90
2.60
White
Murfreesboro, AR
-----
1/90
2.07
White
Murfreesboro, AR
Same guy found this diamond and the one above on same day.
6/90
2.59
Light Brown
Morning Star, AR
Found by a participant in a "Save the Crater" benefit.
7/91
3.39
?
Nashville, AR
----
11/91
6.30
Yellow
Murfreesboro, AR
Heart-shaped
7/94
5.25
Yellow
Nashville, AR
"Lemon Drop" octahedral shape found by Crater regular, not the result of beginner's luck.
8/95
4.35
Brown
Germany
?
3/96
4.65
Brown
?, TX
Second trip to park.
8/96
2.24
yellow
?
?
10/96
3.22
White
Conway, AR
Finder was eleven year old girl.
3/97
6.72
Brown
Lockesburg, AR
Biggest diamond reported since 1991. Color of strong iced tea.
4/98
7.28
Pale Yellow
?, LA
Mother and Daughter on vacation found 5th largest diamond since crater became a park.
FREQUENTLY HELD MISCONCEPTION #1 -- THE MINE IS SALTED, NOT NATURALLY OCCURRING
One question that comes up is that of salting. Skeptical tourists raise the possibility that handfulls of cheap diamonds are scattered for guests to find just to keep the attraction attractive. The value of the reported diamonds is greater than the profit generated by the park. Add in the value of the unreported diamonds and any accusations of salting start to look pretty ridiculous.
However, in compiling the table above I think I've noticed a little puffery. It seems to me the Crater likes to make the papers a couple of times a year, and if September rolls around without two pressworthy finds by tourists, one of the local regulars will report a large diamond. There are about a half-dozen prospectors hunting 200+ days a year and several more working 100+ days a year. Surely this bunch comes up with a big diamond every month or two, and they want the park to remain viable as a tourist attraction, so they might report one or two selected stones in their own self-interest.
It was long assumed that chrome diopside was a necessary companion mineral to gem quality diamonds in lamporite soils. The absence of chrome diopside supposedly meant industrial diamonds only. Chrome diopside was not found in Arkansas, therefore educated geologists were often suspicious when gem quality stones turned up. The discovery in Australia of a kimberlite pipe with characteristics similar to those of the Crater of Diamonds lent credibility to the park.
(Note: In reading about the Crater, you'll see the words kimberlite, peridotite and lamporite used to describe the mineral composition of the soil. Chemically they are similar, but subtly different. I'm told by the staff at the crater that lamporite more accurately describes the dirt there, while the geological structure of the volcanic pipe is still referred to as a kimberlite formation. I chose the background color of this web page in an attempt to approximate the color of the dirt.)
That didn't mean fake stones didn't turn up from time to time at the crater itself and on neighboring land from time to time. What prankster could resist buying a handful of CZ and spreading them around? The park staff is pretty good at spotting them, and I've only found one recent instance where a jeweler identified a manmade stone that was found in the crater. In March of 1991, Brinda Golden of Rusk, TX found a 4.33 carat fake which got past the interpreters. It was later caught by Bill Underwood, a Fayetteville jeweler.
In the same area over the course of a few days two more fake stones of the same type were found by visitors, but were identified as manmade fakes by the park staff. A week later Bill Underwood identified a 4.13 carat 000 grade stone found by "a Texas resident... two or three months ago." That sounded to me like a panicky attempt to reestablish the legitimacy of the crater, so I left it off the list.
FREQUENTLY HELD MISCONCEPTION #2 -- AFTER A CENTURY OF SURFACE COLLECTING THE TOP LAYER OF DIRT IS PLAYED OUT
Another thing I kept reading in my research was a recurring complaint that the mining as practiced at the park just turned the top three feet of soil over and over and that this layer was all played out. While this seems to make sense on the surface (yuk yuk), and the objection has been raised every ten years or so ever since the mine has been open to tourists, the facts just don't bear out the assertion. The number of finds is directly related to the number of visitors by a ratio that hasn't changed much in fifty years.
In fact, several reports by geologists (John T. Fuller, 1908; Arkansas Diamond Company, 1920-1922; The USGS in 1942-1944; and Glen Martin, 1948) allude to the fact that erosion of soft diamond bearing soils tends to concentrate diamonds near the surface, in the top 20-40 feet of soil. It is typical of diamond bearing soils that the surface layers have a higher concentration of larger stones than deeper deposits. Any farmer will tell you that stones will keep percolating up through a plowed field generation after generation.
FREQUENTLY HELD MISCONCEPTION #3 -- ARKANSAS HAS THE ONLY DIAMONDS IN NORTH AMERICA
Arkansas has the only diamond MINE in North America. Sand-sized diamonds of industrial quality have been found along the Colorado/Wyoming border and in Minnesota. Diamond bearing soils have also been discovered in Canada but as far as I've read, none of the other North American finds have been mined. Of course, I've also read that people involved in diamond exploration are very secretive, so just because we haven't heard about any other formations in North America that have lots of gem-quality diamonds doesn't mean they aren't there.
Now for some history, and prepare yourself. It's one of those surreal Arkansas generation-spanning Wild West soap operas.
