If you are looking for a great place to mine diamonds, Arkadelphia, Arkansas is a veritable gold mine (or a diamond mine, as it were) where you can begin your search. The Crater of Diamonds state park is near both Arkadelphia and Murfreesboro and it is the only site in the world in which people can pay a fee to mine for diamonds and then keep everything that they find.The Crater of Diamonds State Park is a nine hundred and eleven acre state park in Arkansas that sits on the site of an old eroded lamproite volcanic pipe, which is why people find diamonds there. While most diamonds form inside of kimberlite volcanic pipes, the diamonds that form inside of lamproite are every bit as valuable as their counterparts that form in kimberlite.
John Huddleston was the first person ever to find diamonds at this diamond deposit. Huddleston purchased the property where the ancient volcano rested in 1906 and in August of that year, he unearthed the first two diamonds from the site.
Immediately following this first find, diamond fever ensued and hoards of people flooded into the area looking for diamonds. While the Arkansas diamond fever has cooled since 1906, 60,000 people still visit the Crater of Diamonds State Park each year and have found over 75,000 diamonds since 1906.
Since the site became a state park in 1971, people have found over 19,000 diamonds, most of which are very small. The small diamonds that people find, they usually keep as souvenirs rather than trying to cut them or sell them.
As a visitor to the Crater of Diamonds State Park, the first thing you should do is visit the visitor’s center where you can learn about the geological factors that form diamonds and where you can learn a few tips on how to recognize diamonds in the rough. Many people who visit the park have no idea how to recognize diamonds in the rough, but find diamonds after a visit to this park’s interpretive center.
A handful of people have made considerable finds at the Crater of Diamonds State Park both before and after it became a state park. The first notable discovery was a diamond of 17.86 carats that Lee J. Wagner of the Arkansas Diamond Company found in 1917. This exceptional canary yellow diamond is still uncut and on display in the National Museum of Natural History.
In 1924, W. O. Bassum discovered the Uncle Sam diamond which is the largest diamond ever discovered in North America at 40.23 carats. Jewelers have cut this diamond twice so that this diamond is now a 12.42-carat diamond.
It would be forty years before anyone would find another notable diamond at the Crater of Diamonds, but in 1964, John Pollock unearthed the Star of Murfreesboro, which is a blue diamond, that weighs in at 34.25 carats. Comparatively soon thereafter, in 1975, W. W. Johnson discovered the Amarillo Starlight, which is the largest diamond (at 16.37 carats) that anyone has found since the site became a state park in 1972.
The next significant find was in 1978 when Betty Lamle unearthed an 8.61-carat diamond dubbed the Lamle Diamond followed by the 1981 discovery of an 8.82-carat diamond. This 1981 diamond is the Star of Shreveport discovered by Carroll Blankenship.
The next notable find at the Crater of Diamonds, was not until 1990, when Shirley Strawn found the Strawn-Wagner Diamond that was comparatively small at only 3.09 carats. However, when Strawn had this diamond cut to 1.09 carats in 1997 the American Gem Society gave it a perfect 0/0/0 grade, making it the first diamond ever to receive such an AGS grading.
In 1991, Joe Fedzora found the Bleeding Heart Diamond, which is a 6.23-carat brownish yellow diamond and in 1997, Richard Cooper found the 6.72-carat Cooper Diamond, which is an unusual deep purplish-brown color. The next notable find did not occur until 2006 when Marvin Culver found the Okie Dokie Diamond, a deep canary yellow, flawless 4.21-carat diamond, which has received more media attention than most other Crater gems because of its flawlessness.
Though the Okie Dokie Diamond received the most media attention, during that same year of 2006, Bob Wehle found yet another deep canary yellow, flawless diamond that weighed in at 5.47 carats. Wehle dubbed his diamond the “Sunshine Diamond” but did not seek out media attention for it.
In late 2006, Donald and Brenda Roden made another notable find in a 6.35-carat honey brown diamond dubbed the Roden Diamond.
Eric Blake claimed to have found a 3.93-carat tea-colored diamond at the Crater in 2007; it was a fraud. However, in 2007 Chad Johnson discovered a 4.38-carat tea-colored diamond that is not a fraud.
The most recent significant find at the Crater is the 2008 find by Denis Tyrrell. Tyrrell uncovered a 4.42-carat diamond dubbed the Kimberly Diamond.
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