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Monday, Dec. 01, 2008

The hopeful descend on Crater of Diamonds

CRATER OF DIAMONDS STATE PARK, Ark. -- In one hand I carried a white plastic bucket strapped to a couple of wood-framed screens.

In the other I held on to a small shovel. My camera hung from my shoulder. I should have watched where I was going.

Instead, my eyes stared into the soft brown dirt, occasionally darting from side to side, searching for something, anything, that sparkled.

After all, this was Crater of Diamonds State Park, the eighth-largest depository of diamonds in the world -- a 37½-acre carpet of diamonds.

Better yet, it's finder's keepers. I might just find a retirement gem.

It could happen. A couple of days before I arrived on a warm morning in late September, Richard Burke of Flint, Mich., walked away with a 4.68-carat white diamond worth, well, who knows how much.

Why not me?

A little science might be in order about now. Crater of Diamonds sits over an extinct volcano where diamonds began to form more than 3 billion years ago, 60 to 100 miles below ground. About 100 million years ago gas and rock blasted to the surface through a volcanic vent, carrying the diamonds along.

In 1906, farmer John Wesley Huddleston found the first diamonds, including a 2.65-carat blue-white sparkler. Not surprisingly, Huddleston's find set off an Arkansas diamond rush.

Over the years several people tried to mine diamonds commercially, but all were unsuccessful, thanks in part to lawsuits, fires and, most notably, inadequate production. A mine shaft went down 60 feet but didn't produce any more diamonds per ton than above ground. And i''s a heck of a lot easier to find diamonds above ground.

More than 75,000 diamonds have been discovered since Huddleston's find, more than 27,000 of them since 1972, when Arkansas bought the land for a state park.

The biggest? A 40.23-carat rough diamond found in 1924 by an employee of the Arkansas Diamond Corp. The Uncle Sam diamond, as it was called, was cut to 12.42 carats and still ranks as the largest diamond ever found in North America.

Since the state park was established, the biggest find was the Amarillo Starlight diamond, which weighed 16.37 carats and was cut to 7.54 carats. The 3-plus carat Strawn-Wagner diamond, found in 1990, was graded flawless by the American Gem Society and turned into a 1-carat diamond ring. It was valued at $33,000.

This doesn't mean diamonds are going to just jump out of the ground and into your hands. Darn it.

"To find a diamond, you have to have a little luck and perseverance," said Bill Henderson, the park's assistant superintendent. "The more people come the better their chances.

"We do have people come and say, 'I'm going to find a diamond,' and they stay until they do."

Last year 170,000 people -- a record -- visited the park. More than 1,000 diamonds were uncovered. Attendance is down about 25 percent this year, Henderson said, probably because of higher gas prices and the slow economy. Still, Richard Burke's big find was the 612th discovered so far this year.

Fall is a popular time to hunt, particularly October, when people travel through the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas to see the changing colors.

"And we're just as busy in November, around Thanksgiving," he said. "The campgrounds are full."

The day before my arrival, four diamonds were found -- three white diamonds weighing 7, 10 and 14 points, and a less-valuable 24-point brown diamond. One carat equals 100 points.

"We can't promise everybody a diamond," Henderson said, "but we can promise a family outing that you can't find anywhere else in the world."