MURFREESBORO, Ark.—It’s a 37-acre moonscape, a barren expanse of furrowed ash-gray earth, unshaded from the still-scorching September sun. Nothing grows, but beneath the volcanic soil lies something that has lured treasure seekers and speculators to this unassuming stretch of ground for more than a century: diamonds.
Crater of Diamonds State Park, about 50 miles northeast of Texarkana, has been one of Arkansas’ most popular state parks since it was founded in 1972, drawing tens of thousands of people through its gates each year to sift through the dirt.
In the past three years, it has become even more popular, with 432,853 visitors between 2007 and 2009, an average of 144,000, by far the highest-ever three-year total.
Whether the sluggish economy has driven people to seek their fortune in precious minerals, or whether word-of-mouth and media coverage have just surged recently isn’t certain, said Assistant Park Superintendent William Henderson.
But for the most part, things have held true to the park’s iron law:
“The more people come, the more diamonds are found,” Henderson said.
Indeed, more diamonds have been found in the past three years than at any time since the mid-1990s.
Pretty Rocks
To the trained eye, a diamond stands out among other rocks like a piece of gold in a cow patty. They don’t sparkle, but they are perfectly smooth with rounded edges and have an oily feel. And mud and dirt don’t stick to them.
But given the rarity of the mineral, the inexperience of most Crater of Diamonds searchers and the fact that a quarter-carat gem is about the size of a lentil, finding a diamond is rare.
“Diamonds are not easily found,” Henderson said. “If they were, I’d just hand you one right out of my pocket.”
Sally Dixon of Bullhead City, Ariz., was learning that the hard way last Monday. She was perched at a wash station, accompanied by her husband and her good luck charm: a small bucket bearing the logo of Harrah’s Casino.
She has come diamond hunting before and found what might have been a diamond.
“We have a family debate going on,” Dixon said. “We might have thrown away some things we shouldn’t have thrown away.”
This year, the search has been even more fruitless.
“We’ve got some pretty rocks, but we’re still looking for the big one,” she said.
Methods for finding diamonds vary but generally fall into three categories, Henderson said. Dixon is a washer, the enterprising type who hauls dirt to one of the park’s two wash stations to sieve it through a screen.
Somewhat less intense are those who pick a spot and dig or sift through the dry dirt; most casual is the hunter who traverses the field by foot, scanning only the surface of the ground.
Even that method sometimes works, like last year when, on a day when about 2,000 people had scoured the field, a 12-year-old girl found a sizable diamond in the open, just next to the walking path.
Dorothy and Harold Breidenbach can only wish they were so lucky.
“We’ve tried ’em all,” Dorothy said. “We’ve tried the dry sifting, we’ve tried the walking and looking, now we’re trying the wet sifting and none of it’s worked.”
Speculators
The Crater of Diamonds was formed about 100 million years ago in a volcanic eruption. At the time, the site was underwater, and the diamonds became concentrated near the surface in the lamproite, a type of soil that often contains the gemstones.
It is a unique site, said Park Interpreter Margi Jenks, the only active diamond mine in the United States. Several other lamproite deposits sit about within 2 miles of the crater, but none has been found to contain diamonds.
The first diamond was stumbled upon by farmer John Huddleston, who sold his farm shortly afterward for $36,000. The owner of the adjacent farm opened it as a tourist attraction, where people could pay to hunt for diamonds.
The parcels changed hands several times during the following decades. A corrugated tin shack marks the entrance to a mine shaft that penetrated 60 feet below the surface. Though it stands as a reminder of several attempts at commercial mining, most operations used hydrowashing, sifting large amounts of dirt through large screens using pumped water.
The mine was reopened as a tourist attraction in the 1950s by Howard Millar, the man who dubbed it Crater of Diamonds. General Earth Minerals purchased the mine in 1969 for $1.1 million; three years later, it was sold to the State of Arkansas for $750,000, when it became a state park, Jenks said.
“One of the problems (owners) had was they always had a big pot of money to buy it, but they never had much left to develop it,” Jenks said. “They were speculators.”
Quality, Not Quantity
Crater of Diamonds has yielded some massive rocks over the years. The biggest, the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam Diamond, was found in 1924. Amarillo Starlight, a 16.37-carat diamond discovered in 1975, is the largest since the establishment of the state park.
But with diamonds, bigger isn’t always better.
“Diamonds are kind of like people—it’s about quality, not quantity,” Jenks said.
Which is why the guy who found a 5.75-carat stone last year will take home a decent souvenir while a woman’s half-carat, gem-quality diamond is worth $8,000. It’s also why the Strawn-Wagner Diamond, perhaps the most flawless diamond ever found at the crater, is a slim carat after being cut but is valued at about $34,000.
The chances of finding such a diamond—or any diamond—are slim. To keep the chances up, park workers plow the diamond field each month and say the best time to search for diamonds is after a good rain.
But despite the surge in diamond finds caused by skyrocketing attendance, the chances of walking out of the park with any diamond are as slim as they’ve ever been.
In the peak year of 1994, when 1,421 were discovered, 27 diamonds were found for every 1,000 visitors; the average between 1980 and 2005 was 13.4. Between 2006 and 2009, the average was less than half that, 6.5 diamonds per thousand.
That’s not bothering Patricia Braziel, lying on her side last Monday beneath a blue umbrella, scraping at the edge of a hole. She holds out hopes of striking it rich, but she’s a realist.
“You just have to know that you’re here to have a good time and realize you’re probably not going to walk out of here a millionaire,” said Braziel, a Pendleton, S.C., school psychologist.
But just because you probably won’t find a diamond doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, Henderson said.
“We can’t promise everybody a diamond,” Henderson said. “Not everyone’s going to find one. But what you can do is bring the whole family and have them do something they can’t do anywhere else in the world.”
Crater of Diamonds State Park, about 50 miles northeast of Texarkana, has been one of Arkansas’ most popular state parks since it was founded in 1972, drawing tens of thousands of people through its gates each year to sift through the dirt.
In the past three years, it has become even more popular, with 432,853 visitors between 2007 and 2009, an average of 144,000, by far the highest-ever three-year total.
Whether the sluggish economy has driven people to seek their fortune in precious minerals, or whether word-of-mouth and media coverage have just surged recently isn’t certain, said Assistant Park Superintendent William Henderson.
But for the most part, things have held true to the park’s iron law:
“The more people come, the more diamonds are found,” Henderson said.
Indeed, more diamonds have been found in the past three years than at any time since the mid-1990s.
Pretty Rocks
To the trained eye, a diamond stands out among other rocks like a piece of gold in a cow patty. They don’t sparkle, but they are perfectly smooth with rounded edges and have an oily feel. And mud and dirt don’t stick to them.
But given the rarity of the mineral, the inexperience of most Crater of Diamonds searchers and the fact that a quarter-carat gem is about the size of a lentil, finding a diamond is rare.
“Diamonds are not easily found,” Henderson said. “If they were, I’d just hand you one right out of my pocket.”
Sally Dixon of Bullhead City, Ariz., was learning that the hard way last Monday. She was perched at a wash station, accompanied by her husband and her good luck charm: a small bucket bearing the logo of Harrah’s Casino.
She has come diamond hunting before and found what might have been a diamond.
“We have a family debate going on,” Dixon said. “We might have thrown away some things we shouldn’t have thrown away.”
This year, the search has been even more fruitless.
“We’ve got some pretty rocks, but we’re still looking for the big one,” she said.
Methods for finding diamonds vary but generally fall into three categories, Henderson said. Dixon is a washer, the enterprising type who hauls dirt to one of the park’s two wash stations to sieve it through a screen.
Somewhat less intense are those who pick a spot and dig or sift through the dry dirt; most casual is the hunter who traverses the field by foot, scanning only the surface of the ground.
Even that method sometimes works, like last year when, on a day when about 2,000 people had scoured the field, a 12-year-old girl found a sizable diamond in the open, just next to the walking path.
Dorothy and Harold Breidenbach can only wish they were so lucky.
“We’ve tried ’em all,” Dorothy said. “We’ve tried the dry sifting, we’ve tried the walking and looking, now we’re trying the wet sifting and none of it’s worked.”
Speculators
The Crater of Diamonds was formed about 100 million years ago in a volcanic eruption. At the time, the site was underwater, and the diamonds became concentrated near the surface in the lamproite, a type of soil that often contains the gemstones.
It is a unique site, said Park Interpreter Margi Jenks, the only active diamond mine in the United States. Several other lamproite deposits sit about within 2 miles of the crater, but none has been found to contain diamonds.
The first diamond was stumbled upon by farmer John Huddleston, who sold his farm shortly afterward for $36,000. The owner of the adjacent farm opened it as a tourist attraction, where people could pay to hunt for diamonds.
The parcels changed hands several times during the following decades. A corrugated tin shack marks the entrance to a mine shaft that penetrated 60 feet below the surface. Though it stands as a reminder of several attempts at commercial mining, most operations used hydrowashing, sifting large amounts of dirt through large screens using pumped water.
The mine was reopened as a tourist attraction in the 1950s by Howard Millar, the man who dubbed it Crater of Diamonds. General Earth Minerals purchased the mine in 1969 for $1.1 million; three years later, it was sold to the State of Arkansas for $750,000, when it became a state park, Jenks said.
“One of the problems (owners) had was they always had a big pot of money to buy it, but they never had much left to develop it,” Jenks said. “They were speculators.”
Quality, Not Quantity
Crater of Diamonds has yielded some massive rocks over the years. The biggest, the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam Diamond, was found in 1924. Amarillo Starlight, a 16.37-carat diamond discovered in 1975, is the largest since the establishment of the state park.
But with diamonds, bigger isn’t always better.
“Diamonds are kind of like people—it’s about quality, not quantity,” Jenks said.
Which is why the guy who found a 5.75-carat stone last year will take home a decent souvenir while a woman’s half-carat, gem-quality diamond is worth $8,000. It’s also why the Strawn-Wagner Diamond, perhaps the most flawless diamond ever found at the crater, is a slim carat after being cut but is valued at about $34,000.
The chances of finding such a diamond—or any diamond—are slim. To keep the chances up, park workers plow the diamond field each month and say the best time to search for diamonds is after a good rain.
But despite the surge in diamond finds caused by skyrocketing attendance, the chances of walking out of the park with any diamond are as slim as they’ve ever been.
In the peak year of 1994, when 1,421 were discovered, 27 diamonds were found for every 1,000 visitors; the average between 1980 and 2005 was 13.4. Between 2006 and 2009, the average was less than half that, 6.5 diamonds per thousand.
That’s not bothering Patricia Braziel, lying on her side last Monday beneath a blue umbrella, scraping at the edge of a hole. She holds out hopes of striking it rich, but she’s a realist.
“You just have to know that you’re here to have a good time and realize you’re probably not going to walk out of here a millionaire,” said Braziel, a Pendleton, S.C., school psychologist.
But just because you probably won’t find a diamond doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, Henderson said.
“We can’t promise everybody a diamond,” Henderson said. “Not everyone’s going to find one. But what you can do is bring the whole family and have them do something they can’t do anywhere else in the world.”