How to Dig for Diamonds in Arkansas: 6 Steps and Costs

The one place in Arkansas where the public can dig for diamonds and keep what they find is Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro. Visitors search a plowed field of about 37 acres, and any rock or mineral they find is theirs to keep (Arkansas State Parks). Entry is US$15 for adults and US$7 for ages 6 to 12, and single tools rent from US$5 and the basic kit is US$15, so a day for two adults costs about US$45 before any refundable deposit.

This guide gives the six steps, what each costs, how to tell a diamond from quartz, and how often people really find stones. It also corrects an old idea: Arkansas diamonds do not come from river gravel. They come from a volcanic pipe, and that changes where and how you dig.

Where can you dig for diamonds in Arkansas?

Only at Crater of Diamonds State Park, at 209 State Park Road in Murfreesboro, Pike County. The Arkansas Geological Survey says the largest of several diamond-bearing intrusions in the county, the Prairie Creek pipe (83 acres), is now the park, and that the other intrusions are privately owned and closed to the public (Arkansas Geological Survey, Brochure 002).

The same survey says no diamonds have been confirmed from other ground next to the park, including river deposits along the Little Missouri River, even though rumors say otherwise (Arkansas Geological Survey, State Park Series 03). So a plan to pan creeks or dig terraces elsewhere in the state is unlikely to turn up diamonds. Quartz crystals are the other thing people dig for in Arkansas, covered further down.

The history explains the setting. The first diamonds were found in August 1906, and several thousand, up to 20.5 carats, were produced in the following years (USGS Bulletin 735-I). The survey says the mining ventures lost money, were under-funded and were abandoned. The state bought the land and opened it to public searching in 1972. The USGS lists no US mine production of natural industrial diamond in 2024 or 2025 (estimate) (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026), so the park is a recreation site and not a working mine.

What it costs to dig at Crater of Diamonds State Park

Prices below come from the park page checked in October 2026. A refundable deposit is charged per rented item, and rental tools go back each day. Ladders and battery-operated or motor-driven tools are not allowed, so bring hand tools only.

A saruca is a round-bottomed screen used to settle heavy minerals into the center. The search area is open daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and closed on New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (Arkansas State Parks). Park staff identify stones and minerals you bring in at no charge. Use the calculator to price your own group. Fees above are the October 2026 rates.

How to dig for diamonds in Arkansas: 6 steps

1. Check the day and the weather. The survey says the most popular method, surface walking, works best after a rain, when erosion has washed new stones clear of the clay. Plan to arrive when the search area opens at 8 a.m., because it closes at 4 p.m.
2. Buy your ticket and pick your tools. Adults pay US$15. Bring a shovel, a screen and a bucket, or rent the basic kit. If you want to wash the sand yourself, the advanced kit adds the saruca.
3. Choose a method. Walk the field slowly looking for glints, mark off one square yard and study it closely, or dig and screen. The table in the next section compares them.
4. Dig to the gravel, then screen. The survey describes serious hunters locating an old drainage, digging to the gravel at its bottom, removing the coarse stones, washing out the clay and then screening to an even grain size before using the saruca. Plan for wet, muddy, heavy work.
5. Dry the concentrate and look at it closely. Heavy grains collect in the middle of the screen. Tip the concentrate onto a flat surface and search it by eye once it is dry. A diamond is usually smaller than a pencil eraser.
6. Get anything shiny identified. Take it to the park’s identification table. Park staff keep a count of registered finds, and any diamond you find is yours to keep.

Do not test a stone by hitting it with a hammer. The survey warns that diamonds have cleavage planes and a hit can split them.

Digging methods compared

The park and the survey describe three methods. They are not equal in effort or in how many stones they have produced, and the figures below are what the sources say, not our estimates.

Sources: Arkansas Geological Survey and the park statement in a July 2025 press release. The 3.36-carat Dash Diamond that release describes was found after digging only 6 to 8 inches and wet sifting the third bucket, so deep digging is not required.

How to tell a diamond from quartz and other stones

Rough Arkansas diamonds do not look like jewelry. The survey describes them as small, with an oily metallic luster, usually rounded or spherical, slick to the touch and in a range of colors. The rounding comes from partial dissolving in the magma on the way up, which gives curved faces rather than sharp ones.

Chart

Colors of diamonds found at the park

Share of 25,857 registered stones, 1972 to 2006 (per cent)

The park lists three colors: white, brown and yellow. Quartz, calcite, jasper, agate, amethyst and garnet also occur in the field. Use these checks:

• Hardness. Diamond is 10 on the Mohs scale and quartz is 7 (Geology.com Mohs scale). A steel knife blade is only about 5 to 6.5, so both a diamond and a piece of quartz will scratch the blade. A knife test cannot tell them apart, which corrects advice often repeated online.
• Calcite. It is soft (3 on the scale) and fizzes in weak hydrochloric acid, while quartz does not (Arkansas Geological Survey).
• Shape and surface. Arkansas quartz is best known as prismatic, elongate, clear crystals (Arkansas Geological Survey, Brochure 001). Arkansas diamonds are rounded and often pitted.
• Colorless, clear stones. Many look the same to the eye. Staff at the park table settle it for you, so take every doubtful stone there.

The survey also says park staff do not salt the field with stones. It calls the site a natural deposit whose stones have recognizable features.

What visitors actually find: how many and how big

As of 13 January 2026, park visitors had found more than 37,377 diamonds since the park opened in 1972 (Arkansas State Parks). Park records for 1972 to 2006 list 25,857 stones and 2,375,151 paid visits. That works out to about 1.1 registered stones per 100 visits, and the chart below shows how the yearly count moved. Many visitors find nothing, and some find several stones.

Chart

Diamonds registered at the park per year

Number of registered stones, selected years from 1972 to 2006

Stones are small. The survey puts the average since 1972 at about 0.21 carat, or 0.04 gram. A carat is 0.2 gram. The Gems & Gemology report from a Baylor University field trip describes the deposit as grading between 0.01 and 1.25 carats per 100 tons, and its authors found stones of 0.01 to 0.05 carat in about three hours (GIA, Gems & Gemology, Summer 2020). Of the 25,857 stones in the survey’s table, 734 weighed more than one carat, about 2.8%.

Recent years give a feel for the pace. By early July 2025, 332 diamonds had been registered, and by mid-September the count was 403 (Arkansas Outside, September 2025).

The biggest diamonds found at the park

The largest diamond ever found in the United States is the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam, unearthed in 1924 during early mining, not by a visitor (Arkansas.com press release). It was cut to 12.42 carats and is held by the Smithsonian. The Strawn-Wagner, found in 1990, was a 3.03-carat white stone cut to a 1.09-carat round diamond that graded D color and flawless.

Chart

Named large diamonds from the park, in carats

Weight in carats; discovery year in brackets

Not every large stone is white. The 2025 finds include the 3.36-carat white Dash Diamond and the 2.79-carat brown William Diamond. The colors in the park’s records are shown in the next chart, and the white stones make up well over half.

Why the diamonds are in a volcanic pipe, not a riverbed

The diamonds came up in a volcanic eruption about 106 million years ago (plus or minus 4 million), but the diamonds themselves are far older; some mineral inclusions inside them are dated at 3.2 billion years (Arkansas Geological Survey). The host rock is lamproite, a potassium-rich volcanic rock related to kimberlite. The survey estimates the Prairie Creek pipe holds about 78.5 million tons of diamond-bearing pyroclastic rock and 24 million tons of non-diamond magmatic lamproite to a depth of 650 feet.

Weathering is why a shovel works. The diamond-bearing tuff, a rock made of volcanic ash and fragments, breaks down at the surface into a sticky green and yellow clay. Diamonds are resistant and wash out of it. Erosion has stripped about 165 feet of rock from the pipe, concentrating heavy minerals in the surface soil (Arkansas Geological Survey, State Park Series 03).

The survey says no diamonds have been recovered from the conglomerate (cemented gravel) on the pipe, and that the hard magmatic lamproite is unlikely to yield them. Company drilling in the 1990s found too few diamonds for a profitable mine, so the site stays a public field. At the present rate of recovery, the survey says visitors could keep finding stones in the weathered zone alone for at least 500 years.

The older advice on this page, that Arkansas diamonds sit in ancient river terraces and floodplains, is not supported by the survey. The only confirmed source is the pipe.

Other places to dig in Arkansas: quartz crystals and the gold question

Arkansas is better known worldwide for quartz crystals than for diamonds. The General Assembly made quartz crystal the state mineral in 1976. The veins run in a belt 30 to 40 miles wide for about 170 miles west-southwest from Little Rock into Oklahoma. Most collectible crystal comes from the Blakely and Crystal Mountain Sandstones, both Ordovician, and the veins formed 280 to 245 million years ago (Arkansas Geological Survey, Brochure 001).

The same brochure lists eleven pay-to-dig quartz mines, six of them near Mount Ida, with entry fees from US$4 to US$20 in 2005. Those are 2005 prices and phone numbers and are out of date. On Ouachita National Forest land, visitors may pick up small amounts of surface quartz for personal use, but digging needs Forest Service permission (Encyclopedia of Arkansas).

People also ask about gold. The video below looks at the 1880s gold boom town of Bear in Garland County, Arkansas.

▶ Looks at the 1880s gold boom town of Bear in Garland County, Arkansas. · 6:31

Rules, permission and safety when you dig

• At the park: follow the posted rules. No ladders and no battery-operated or motor-driven mining tools.
• On private land: get the owner’s permission before you enter. The survey notes the other diamond-bearing pipes are privately held and closed to the public.
• Hole safety: do not leave deep holes with steep sides. Slope the sides, fill the hole when you finish and wear gloves, boots and eye protection.
• Heat and water: a long day on an open field is hard work, so bring water and sun protection.
• No mercury: never use mercury to concentrate anything. A screen and water are all that diamond sifting needs.

Nearby sites with similar-sounding names can mislead. For example, Herkimer “diamonds” in New York are quartz crystals, not diamonds, as covered in our Herkimer diamond digging guide. For a wider view of where natural diamonds come from, see our guide to the best places to find diamonds.

What satellites can and cannot do for a diamond search

A satellite cannot see a diamond of 0.2 carat on the ground, and it does not replace a screen and a bucket. The Crater of Diamonds field is a small, plowed, well-mapped site where the pipe boundary is already known from drilling.

Satellite data does help with larger or unmapped ground. Multispectral and radar images show rock types, alteration, drainage and structure across a whole license area in one pass. That lets a team rank areas for sampling before sending people into the field. Farmonaut’s mineral detection analysis takes a KML, KMZ or polygon boundary and returns an exploration-target map, usually within 5 to 20 business days. It is a targeting step ahead of sampling and not a resource estimate, and diamonds are among the minerals it covers.

Consultants and license holders can read how this works in our guide to satellite-based mineral detection, or send boundary details through the mining query form to ask for a quote. Questions can also go through the contact page.

▶ Explains remote sensing for mining in plain words: six instrument families and why agreement between them matters. · 2:01

Frequently asked questions

Can you really keep the diamonds you find in Arkansas?

Yes, at Crater of Diamonds State Park. The park says any rock or mineral you find is yours to keep (Arkansas State Parks). Rules on private land are set by the owner.

How much does it cost to dig for diamonds at Crater of Diamonds?

Admission is US$15 for adults, US$7 for ages 6 to 12, and children under 6 pay US$0. A basic tool kit rents for US$15 with a US$45 refundable deposit (Arkansas State Parks, October 2026).

What is the best time to find diamonds in Arkansas?

The survey says surface hunting works best after a rain, when erosion exposes new stones. The search area is open daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., so arrive early.

What is the best way to dig for diamonds?

The park says most diamonds are found by wet sifting, and only about 10% by surface searching. The survey adds that serious diggers who screen gravel recover most of the small stones.

How many diamonds are found each year?

The count varies. Park records show 1,501 stones in 1983 and 488 in 2006. In 2025, 403 had been registered by mid-September (Arkansas Outside).

What is the biggest diamond found in Arkansas?

The 40.23-carat Uncle Sam, found in 1924 during early mining. Since the park opened in 1972, the largest stone on the survey’s list is the 16.37-carat Amarillo Starlight from 1975.

Are there diamonds in Arkansas rivers or on other land?

The survey says none are confirmed from other ground beside the park, including Little Missouri River deposits. Smaller pipes on private land have yielded a few stones, but access is not open to the public.

How do I know if a stone is a diamond or quartz?

Do not rely on a knife scratch test, because both minerals scratch steel. Look for a small, rounded stone with an oily luster and take it to the park’s identification table.

Can you dig for quartz crystals in Arkansas?

Yes. Pay-to-dig mines near Mount Ida and elsewhere in the Ouachita Mountains let visitors dig crystals for a fee. Call ahead for current prices, since the survey’s list dates from 2005.

Can satellites find diamonds?

Not the stones. They can map geology over large areas to rank where to sample, but only fieldwork can confirm a diamond.