OK, it’s really Crater of Diamonds, but there was something vaguely farcical about the whole thing, so I like my name better.
After touring Historic Washington, I drove north for about 45 minutes to this park. The diamond deposit here is the eighth-largest in the world, the only one in the United States that’s “productive,” and the only one in the world that’s open to the public.
I toured the small museum which featured replicas of the significant diamonds found at the park and gave the history of several unsuccessful attempts to mine diamonds commercially on the spot. Then I watched a short video on how to look for diamonds and paid my $7.00 which gave me access to the field.
And field it is — 37 acres of plowed dirt.
I called my wife to ask her how large a diamond she wanted me to find, but she wasn’t particular. She just said “the larger the better.”
There are two shelters where visitors can wet screen the dirt for diamonds. You can also rent equipment for dry screening, but I declined. I opted instead for a method I call “wander about with my hands in my pockets and stare at the ground.” Here I am demonstrating my method.
And here I am holding up a sorta-diamond-shaped rock of no value whatsoever that I discovered while using my method.
There are signs scattered about the area indicating where large diamonds have been found in the past. The most recent find, as far as I could tell, was in 1981, giving you an idea of my odds. The woman at the gift shop told me that an average of two diamonds are found each day, but the vast majority of them are small and not of gem quality.
After about 45 minutes of fruitless searching I decided that if I couldn’t find any rocks, I could at least stack some. And that’s where a bit of irony comes into play. I picked up a silver-dollar-sized rock to cap my stack and noticed a bright white stone tucked into a crevice. Diamonds, or so I’m told, are slick, and dirt doesn’t stick to them. Such was definitely the case with this BB-sized stone. I picked at it with my finger to get a better look. It popped out immediately and fell to the ground and I couldn’t find it again. Was it a diamond? I’ll never know. It was certainly the most diamond-like thing I saw while I was there.
I picked up a pocketful of stones because I didn’t want to go away empty-handed. A few of them were somewhat interesting, as stones go, but none of them were diamonds. The place closed at 5:00, so after an hour and 15 minutes, I had to leave. As I was walking out, I happened upon this man who was carting about two trailers full of diamond-mining equipment. I overheard him say that, with all his time and effort and equipment, he had found the exact same number of diamonds that I had.
