Found A Diamond The Easy Way!| Crater of Diamonds State Park

While exploring YouTube this morning, I happened across numerous videos about the Crater of Diamonds State Park at Murfreesboro, Arkansas.  In upcoming days and weeks, I will be sprinkling these within other subjects, e.g., the Chihuahuan Desert, Route 66, amongst "whatever else strikes my fancy".  [Note: these may not be in chronological order.]

I have a connection to the park in that I have visited there four times, in 1973, 1978, 1984, and 2015.  I found a 37-point "white" diamond on my first trip, but I've come up empty on subsequent visits.  

As recounted in previous posts, I did get to hold a 4-carat brown diamond when I was there in 1978.  My neighbor tagged along when I decided to travel from El Paso to Arkansas for some Spring Break rockhunting and other endeavors, e.g., looking for old beer cans, another of my hobbies.  

On the day we spent at the park, we were digging and sieving alongside a couple from Dallas, Texas and enjoying the conversation while we searched.  Sometime in the late afternoon, we decided to leave and do some other things, such as "dumping" for old beer cans, i.e., searching the woods near roadways.  

Later, as we were walking out of the woods, the folks from Dallas were driving by.  They stopped to chat with us and asked me to take a look at what they found (the park office was closed by then).  As soon as they poured the contents of a plastic bottle into my hand, out rolled a brown, translucent diamond.  I told them, by all means, go back to the park office for verification the next morning.  

I forgot to get a phone number or address from them, so I didn't get the information about the diamond for several weeks.  Back in El Paso, perhaps once a week (on a random day) I would purchase a Dallas paper, just to "catch up on the outside world".  

And one day, I ran across a short article about a couple from Dallas and the 4-carat brown diamond they found.  (The article said it was valued at $4,000.)  No names were given, but I am certain it was the same diamond and the same folks.  I felt rather proud that I had been the first to unofficially identify the stone as a diamond.  (And that I got to hold it.)

So, if you get a hankering to go diamond hunting in the cooler weather before next Summer, I would suggest that you do your homework, by way of watching some (if not all) of these videos and take notes.  Watching the videos and taking notes takes patience.  That patience may serve you well at the crater and you are probably not going to find a diamond on your first visit (as I did in 1973).  

There are books and other resources you can purchase from the park website (as far as I know), so you can develop a "feel" for what they look like, i.e., what is the range of shapes and colors.  There is a limit of 1500 people per day, so find out about what are their busiest times and perhaps buy tickets online, i.e., they do sometimes sell out.

Here is a Geologic Publication about the particulars of this diamond resource.