Crater of Diamonds Newsletter

Five large diamonds top list of 2009 finds

By Waymon Cox

Happy New Year from Crater of Diamonds State Park! 2009 was a big year for diamond finds and our third year in a row to register more than 900 diamonds (14^th time since 1972). Nearly 183 carats of diamonds were found, 29 of which weighed more than one carat each. Topping the list for the year’s largest were five very memorable finds!

2009’s first big find came in early April, when miner and author Glenn Worthington of Springdale, Arkansas found his first two-carat-plus gem, a beautiful 2.04-carat yellow diamond. The stone had a smooth, lustrous surface with no cracks, and was the shape of an elongated crystal, similar to a marquise cut. Worthington dubbed his bright yellow diamond the Easter Sunrise because that is what he thought of when he saw it shining in his screen full of gravel.

Glenn Worthington's 2.04-carat Easter Sunrise was the first two-carat-plus diamond found in 2009.

It didn’t take long for the Easter Sunrise to have company as one of the year’s largest diamonds. Less than three weeks later, Alabamian Michael Burns visited the Crater and found the year’s largest find—and the 17^th-largest since 1972. Burns visited the park on April 28 and found a 5.75-carat white diamond on the surface of the search area’s West Drain. He named his large, rounded gem the Arabian Knight, after his hometown high school football team in Arab.

Michael Burns's 5.75-carat Arabian Knight was the largest diamond found at the Crater since 2006.

Less than a month later, a third two-carat-plus diamond was registered at the Crater. Stephen Carter, a Hot Springs, Arkansas resident, found a beautiful, 2.35-carat white diamond on the surface of the search area as he was leaving the park on May 12. He and his wife saw the cube-shaped gem as an answer to their prayers, and so they named the diamond Faith.

Stephen Carter found his 2.35-carat Faith diamond on the surface while leaving the search area.

Starting in mid-May, bad weather set in for the summer, dampening park visitation and other large diamond finds for the next five months. In October, the diamond search area finally dried enough that we were able to complete our fifth-annual trenching operation. Royce Walker, of Walker Sand and Gravel in Lockesburg, Arkansas, was the contractor who conducted the project to uncover new diamond-bearing material in the search area.

On October 20, as Walker was walking to his bulldozer to give his son a break, he found a 2.93-carat brown diamond which appeared to be the broken corner of an even larger stone. Walker showed his find to regular miner Billy Moore, who was searching nearby, and asked him what he thought of the gem. Moore told him, “You just found a three-carat diamond!” Smiling, he continued, “I’ve been looking for that for a year!”

Royce Walker spotted this 2.93-carat gem on the surface while completing an excavation project for the Crater.

By the end of October, Moore would indeed find his own three-carat gem. On October 30, he discovered a 3.20-carat white diamond while wet sifting in the East Drain of the search area. “At first I thought it was a piece of wadded-up gum wrapper,” he said, “then I rolled it around with my finger and saw a shiny side, and I knew it was a diamond!” Moore named his diamond the Frosty, due to its icy, encrusted appearance. 2009 was a wonderful year for stories of Crater diamond finds, and we look forward to many more great diamond tales in 2010!

Billy Moore's 3.20-carat Frosty diamond was the second-largest gem found at the Crater in 2009.

Crater of Diamonds State Park provides lasting memories through visitor photographs and home movies, as well as Crater rock and mineral collections and personal diamond finds. Even if you've never visited, our free e-mail newsletter is a unique way to experience the Crater outside of the park!

In 2009, more than 14,000 people kept up with the Crater of Diamonds through our newsletter. If you're not a subscriber yet, sign up at http://diamondsstatepark.xyz/newsletter/ to receive feature articles and updates about diamond finds, special events, interpretive programs and more to keep you in the diamond-hunting spirit all year! We appreciate all of our regular readers and hope that if you're in Southwest Arkansas this year, you'll stop by for a visit. Who knows? You may find the Crater's next big diamond!

Search area last plowed: October 20, 2009

Diamond finds for December 28, 2009 - January 2, 2010

December 28 - Julie Doddridge, California, 5 pt. white; Pat Beagan, St. Paul, MN, 22 pt. white; Kenneth Shoemaker, Murfreesboro, AR, 9 pt. brown

December 29 - Billy Moore, Murfreesboro, AR, 21 pt. white, 23 pt. white, 63 pt. white, 81 pt. white; Chad Johnson, Murfreesboro, AR, 2 pt. white, 6 pt. white, 10 pt. brown, 23 pt. white

December 30 - Jennifer Sampson, Orlando, FL, 2 pt. white

January 2 - David Anderson, Kent City, MI, 1.31 ct. brown

209 State Park Road
Murfreesboro, AR 71958
Email: craterofdiamonds@arkansas.com
Phone: (870) 285-3113

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