This State Park that encourages you to hunt for real treasure and then lets you keep all of it!

A family vacation spot with a difference....

Here's a park that has a rule - you can keep what you find which is a pretty cool rule to have, but what makes it really interesting is that this is a state park and the “finds” here are diamonds and they are found fairly frequently!!

Oh yeah and before I forget – In case diamonds don’t interest you, this state park is also a cache site, so you could call this a two-birds-with-one-stone kind of adventure.

Where else in the world can you hunt for real diamonds and keep what you find!

Ok – enough suspense – Where is this State Park?
It’s aptly called, Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas.


  by  kthypryn 

Your diamond hunt is on top of a plowed 37.5 acre field, which is the surface of a volcanic crater that had gems. The park staff is pretty helpful and will provide free certification and identification of diamonds found there.

The park is open throughout the year except for Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Here are some of the largest diamonds found in this park:

How big are the diamonds usually found here? Well, don’t expect to find something running in hundreds of thousands of dollars for your first find. Generally, most diamonds found by visitors are too small to be cut, but they still make fantastic & memorable souvenirs. That being said, only your luck and skill at finding a diamond will determine how valuable your find is.

A good statistic to note is that this park averages over 1 diamond find a day and at least 1 diamond over 1 carat found every month on average. Here are some interesting facts on the diamonds found here:

What should you carry? Well – it depends on how you intend to search for diamonds. It would be one of three ways:

1.       Top search – you basically walk up and down the rows of dirt and look for diamonds lying on top of the ground; like you would look for seashells at the beach. The best time to do this is after a hard rain since the soil is washed away, thereby exposing the diamonds.

2.       Dig a little – you can dig the first 6 to 12 inches and check for diamonds. You could sift through the soil using a screen. Any diamonds would be held on the screen and the soil drops through.

3.       Dig deep – you would dig a relatively deep hole and pass the soil through a series of screens. I have to warn you though – this is the most laborious and painful methods of doing this.

As for your tools and implements, you could carry a small trowel/shovel, bucket, screens, etc. or you could rent them directly from the park.As for your tools and implements, you could carry a small trowel/shovel, bucket, screens, etc. or you could rent them directly from the park.

  by  kthypryn