There's A Diamond Mine Open To The Public Just 2 Hours From Here

White, brown and yellow diamonds are found there:

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Where are we, Africa? lol..I was surprised to find that right over in Southwest Arkansas, Murfreesboro, is a diamond mine. Well, they call it a "mine" but it's actually a field. It's open to the public and whatever you find is yours.

It's called The Crater Of Diamonds State Park and they've had diamonds discovered there since 1906. It's a Volcanic Pipe which is part of an ancient volcano.

It's still producing

33,100 diamonds have been found since it became a state park in 1972.
The park has a 37.5 acre field where people can go search using several methods and an average of 2 diamonds a day are still being found.

They plow the field once a month so the best time is to go right after they plow but no one knows when that is because they don't tell. After it rains is also a good time to go although it's a muddy mess.

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Many diamonds are found just by walking along and looking at the surface like this 14 yr old kid did. He found a diamond in his first 30 minutes. Turned out to be a brown diamond, the largest brown one found in the last 40 years, 7.44 carats.

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It'd been raining that week and the larger gems are exposed, it caught his eye several feet away.

Some people think the park is a ripoff because they charge $10 for adults and $6 for kids to look for diamonds and unless you spends many days there the chances of finding one big enough to be worth something is slim.

Afterall, the same field has been replowed and searched over everyday for 47 years. And yet diamonds and other gems are still being found.

It ain't just diamonds

Some of the other gems that are found there are lamproite, amethyst, banded agate, jasper, peridot, garnet, quartz, calcite, barite, and hematite.

So rock hounds enjoy the place too. The park has wash bins where you can take screen boxes and wash away the dirt from the stones:

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You can also take a 5 gallon bucket of stones home with you if you want to search through them at home. The park rents out shovels, buckets and screen boxes if you don't want to bring your own.

Maybe this guy has a good idea since he's getting down below the top soil:

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That makes sense. Most people just stay on the surface though.

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If you ARE lucky enough to find one they have experts on site that will certify the diamond:

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The original owner didn't care

What's interesting is that the original owner of the land was a farmer named John Huddlestone who found what he thought were two large crystals in 1906.

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He took them to a jeweler and found out they were large diamonds so the word spread and people started flocking to the area to search for more.

But the interesting part is that he didn't care about diamonds so he sold the land for $36,000. He looks like he didn't give a flip about diamonds don't he? lol.

Check out the park here. Take the kids, put 'em to work. lol.

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I'd like to stop in there for a day or so, any takers out there? Is it worth the chance? I think so.

Thanks for stopping by folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas

PS- Been working so much offline that I haven't had time to put into research in my Frank Hamer series but that should change soon(much to the chagrin of some) as the cold weather is finally getting here.