CRATOR OF DIAMONDS STATE PARK, MURFREESBORO, AR
I’m so excited! We’re going diamond hunting!!!! We’ve been here before many years ago but Terry’s agreed to come again. This is the only public open pit diamond mine in North America! What you find you can keep. If you like rocks, digging in dirt, mud and puddles this is THE place for you!
We stopped by Walmart on our way in to get rubber boots. It’s been raining for almost 7 days. This is going to be a big pit of mud! How fun!!! Tomorrow is supposed to be the warmest day this week then the temperatures drop significantly so we’ve got one day! We’ve studied the website. We’ve watched the videos. We’re planning to rent equipment and supplement with stuff from the RV. The video says bring tweezers or a pocket knife to pick diamonds out of the gravel…we each have a pocket knife. We checked out the showers and they are heated!!! The laundry room is working so we can dump our clothes in the wash when we’re done tomorrow. We’re golden!
We arrived at 4pm so we scoped out the museum and grounds in preparation for tomorrow. We have our rubber boots from Walmart and a bucket from the RV. You can bring "home" 5-gallons of rocks per day per person but no dirt.
The diamond mine is an open field that gets plowed periodically. There are signs at locations where people have found large diamonds telling their story. There are 2 washing pavilions with tables and water where people can use wire screens to wash and sort their finds. As you leave the field, there is someone who can look at any of your diamond possibilities and identify all your other rocks.
They plow the field spring through fall every couple weeks but not in the winter. There are 3 ways to search for diamonds. We used wet sifting with a screen (Terry top right) and surface searching (Peggy middle).
Bottom left: "The largest gem quality diamond ever found in North America...at 40.23 carats rough...and 12.42 carats cut..."
We searched from about 11 am – 4:15 pm. We found quartz, calcite, barite, jasper, conglomerate, sandstone, volcanic tuff and lamproite. The 2 stones we were looking for we didn’t find, diamonds and amethysts. We’ll have to try again another time but tonight we can barely move we are so sore!
The day we were at the diamond mine 5 people found diamonds. The largest was a 1.40 carat white diamond! The 77 pt and the 1.40 ct diamonds were found wet sifting which is unusual. Usually, the larger diamonds are found just walking the fields (surface searching).
The rocks we did find...no diamonds and no amethysts...maybe next time.
Camping: Crater of Diamonds State Park, Murfreesboro, AR
Electricity, water, sewer, dump station, showers, heated bathrooms(!!!), Verizon 2 LTE