Mining for Diamonds

Today, we were at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas. It is the worlds only "keep what you find" diamond site.

Unfortunately, we didn't find any diamonds. We did however find lots of Quartzsite, calcite, Jasper, and even an amethyst AND we had lots of fun. This stop is dedicated to the Schultz family who gave us the book AUSTIN IN AMERICA in which a dog called Austin visits all 50 states and does something unique in each state. In Arkansas, Austin looked for diamonds. And so did we.

There are three types of searching to be done here at Crater of Diamonds: surface searching, dry sifting, and wet sifting.

Ky is wet sifting using a colander from dollar tree - professional mining supply. 

Kik was surface searching by walking up and down plowed rows. This is a very effective method after the rain, and it rained here last night. This means that diamonds (among other things) may be showing since the surface dirt has been freshly disturbed.

This covered area has many sluice boxes for people to sift wet dirt by piling it into a screen box and shaking it in the water. 

Sy found a really large piece of quartz and the rock and mineral identifying ranger congratulated him on finding such a large piece.

All day long as you find rocks, you can take them up to the front gate to have someone tell you what exactly they are, because most of us searching have no clue. We learned to identify many different rocks throughout the day today.

They provide a nice place to clean up with high-powered hoses over a grate. I was so thankful because you get super muddy, which of course the children loved.

When we got back to our campsite for lunch, this is where we found Scott. This is how he envisioned spending much of our trip, working at a picnic table at our campsite with a different nature "office view" every day. But much of the time, this hasn't been the case, because there has been so much to see and do and we are so very thankful that he's been able to accompany us for most of the activities. Today, however, he was happy to let us get muddy while he accomplished some work.

In the afternoon, we decided to work at the sluice boxes.

There are over 37 acres of plowed fields to search. Just last month a 14-year-old boy found a 7 carat diamond just by walking along these rows and looking at the ground. I guess that's what keeps people coming!