The Claim
Anyone can just turn up and dig for diamonds at Americas only public mine
The crater of diamonds isn’t really a standard treasure story, but it should be included in the list as people do frequently find buried treasure here, with over 33,100 diamonds being found since the park opened in 1972.
People may think that such a place would have had all the good stuff taken by now, but people find diamonds there on a regular basis, with up to several being found each week.
When weather permits the land is ploughed up to help bring a few more diamonds to the surface, which normally happens at random times to stop people turning up after each fresh plough. In January of 2019 just under 30 diamonds have been found, with 5 turning up in one day.
However if your thinking of turning up and striking it rich then you’ll one of the thousands of visitors who turn up each year thinking the same thing. That’s not to say that there haven’t been some huge finds at the park, with the biggest diamond ever found in the United States came from right here in the crater of diamonds park in 1924.
In 2015 some lucky guy managed to find a 8.52-carat white diamond, which is the 5th biggest find ever at the park, valued at over $100,000. All visitors to the park who find a diamond are also allowed to keep their gems at no extra cost.
If your wondering why this happens to be the only publicly accessible diamond mine in not only America, but the whole world, the answer comes from a mix of land ownership changes and commercial failed mining attempts. When the first diamonds were discovered here in August of 1906, several small scale commercial mining operations were launched the same year, but the problem came with the lack of proper machinery.
This was the first time diamonds had been discovered in their natural source in north America, and so no one had the machinery to mine them efficiently, making the whole operation cost to much and get quickly shut down.
During the second world war the United States government set up its own mine in the area to help fund the war effort, since this was literally the only place they could mine diamonds within their own borders. The operation was done by hiring local labour, but since the concentration of diamonds wasn’t high enough, and with the cost of hiring so many people it made it more trouble than its worth.
After this there weren’t any more large scale commercial digs here, and when the park was bought by the state in 1972 and named as a national park open to the public, all future ideas of private commercial mining were forgotten.
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