2005/03 Deep South trip - Crater of Diamonds |
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As we headed south across Arkansas, the temperature soared into the 60s and we were at last into shorts and tee-shirt weather, now almost a thousand miles south of home.
The scenery was also turning green rather than brown or white. The trees were still bare, but the grass was green and the daffodils were up and blooming. We were also having to cope with roadworks, something that’s unusual in Minnesota’s winter. We skirted Little Rock, infamous during the civil rights era, and headed for Murfreesboro and the Crater of Diamonds state park. These are real diamonds and this is the only public diamond mine in the world. There aren’t enough there for a commercial mine to succeed, but a couple of diamonds are found every day on average.
We were too late to do any mining but enjoyed sitting out on a warm evening, a rare treat for us in winter. The campground was about half full with expectant miners.
Friday March 4th
We paid our entry fees and set forth onto the mining area with sifters and trowels, and spent the rest of a very pleasant day looking for diamonds. The mining area is about 40 acres and it’s plowed occasionally to bring diamonds to the surface. There are many techniques used to find diamonds, from just walking up and down the furrows to sifting and washing bucketloads of dirt to digging a shaft. We tried the first two, but didn’t have the equipment for serious digging.
The site has yielded a few big ones over the years, up to 40 carats, and Hilary Clinton wore one, the Star of Arkansas, at 
Bill’s two inaugurals. The diamonds here have one unique property: they are the hardest in the world and will scratch the ones that come from South Africa. Moh’s scale is the geologist’s measure of hardness from 1 (talc) to 10 (diamond) and they had to invent an 11 for Arkansas diamonds.
The park’s experts sound the klaxon if anyone finds a certified diamond, and it went off five times for one group that had dug an 8 foot deep trench. (Not something I’d planned to do with my garden trowel!) We found crystals but no diamonds.
What we did find were copious quantities of really fine agates and jaspers, yellows, reds, and golds, some with beautiful patterns. I left the field with a backpack full of rocks, barely able to stand upright. The crystals we’d found that day had turned out to be calcite, barite, and quartz, but no diamonds. I guess that’s just as well. Having to step over a bag of diamonds for the rest of the vacation would’ve been a real pain!
Saturday March 5th
In the morning we felt the pain of eight hours of digging and walking in slow motion looking at the ground. We were also somewhat fried by yesterday’s Arkansas sunshine. However, it was nice to wake up in the warmth of another sunny morning.
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