Crater of Diamonds Newsletter

Crater of Diamonds State Park is set to celebrate two big milestones this year. March 15, 2012 marks 40 years since the site’s creation as an Arkansas state park. Also, sometime soon and possibly in March, a visitor will register the 30,000th diamond found since the park’s opening. Park records show that we began taking note of the diamond milestones with the 10,000^th in 1986. On June 13^th of that year, James Archer from Nashville, AR found a little 3 point white diamond to claim the honor (Note: 1 carat equals 100 points.). Archer was a devoted and expert diamond miner, who is reputed to have found over 5,000 diamonds during his diamond-finding career at the park. So, it is not surprising that four years later he also was the visitor to register the 15,000^th diamond on September 11, 1990. The diamond was a 21
point white diamond.

It only took 6 years for Crater visitors to find the 20,000^th diamond. On July 15, 1996, Richard Cooper from Lockesburg, AR registered a 30 pt. yellow diamond to claim that distinction. However, it took visitors another nine years to reach the 25^th milestone. On May 8, 2005, Marshall Rieff from Fayetteville registered a 19 point white diamond. While visiting the park for 9 days, Rieff, another expert diamond miner, had found a total of 16 diamonds. The 25,000^th diamond was the 10^th and largest diamond that he registered on May 8^th.

The park staff had noted last year that we were getting close to the 30,000^th mark. So, we are as curious as anyone to find out who will find that landmark diamond and when it will be found. Based on the number of diamonds in recent years that have been registered in February and March, it is possible that we may reach that number sometime in March. The latest count of diamonds found at the park is 29,934 -- just 66 short of 30,000. The park plans to commemorate the find.

By coincidence, the 40^th anniversary of the creation of the Crater of Diamonds State Park falls on March 15^th this year. The park came into being on March 15, 1972. On that date the state of Arkansas purchased the mine with revenue bonds totaling $846,000. The seller was a Dallas company called General Earth Minerals (GEM), whose parent company, GF Industries, had run into financial trouble in 1970. Over the next two years officials from the Parks and Tourism Department and the State Parks, Recreation, and Travel Commission negotiated with GFI, which culminated with the purchase of land for the park on that March day in 1972. Over the 40 years of the park’s existence around 3.1 million diamond dreamers have enjoyed the thrill, and sometimes the success, of searching for diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds State Park.

Search area last plowed: October 20, 2011; Most recent heavy rain: January 24, 2012

January 28 - Billy & Sara Moore, Murfreesboro, AR, 12 pt. brown; Gloria Quinn, Prescott, Ontario, 3 pt. white; Melville Quinn, Prescott, Ontario, 1 pt. white; Jim Graham, Prescott, AR, 9 pt. white