At the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas, it’s possible to sift gravel in a screen and come up with a diamond — and that’s just what happened to Adam Hardin last month when he found a huge brown diamond.
Hardin has spent more than a decade at the state park looking for diamonds before he found the 2.38 carats gem. Though not his first sparkly discovery, this is his first that is more than two carats. According to the state park, Hardin put the diamond in a pill bottle and brought it to the Diamond Discovery Center where it was weighed for him. The stone, which he named Frankenstone, is the size of a pinto bean, says park interpreter Waymon Cox.
The first diamond was discovered here in 1906 when the park was still a private farm. Since then, more than 75,000 diamonds have found their way into delighted people’s palms, including the largest diamond ever discovered in the US. That honor belongs to a white diamond called Uncle Sam which weighed 40.23 carats and was found in 1924. It was cut into an emerald shape and bought by a private collector for $150,000 in 1971 — thus, park visitors are eager to try their own luck here. There’s good-natured rivalry among regular visitors to find the biggest diamond. The diamonds in this park tend to come in white, brown and yellow, in that order.
The diamond search area is 37 acres of an eroded volcanic crater. You pay a small admission fee and whatever you find, you can keep. You bring your own digging tools or rent from the park. If you're in for the long haul (maybe making a tennis bracelet?), you can even pitch a tent at the campground and hunker down for days.
And your odds are good; according to the park, one or two diamonds are found daily.