January 2, 2007

Arkansas's diamond park

Arkansas's diamond site, the Crater of Diamonds State Park, is the eighth largest diamond-bearing deposit in surface area in the world.Here visitors are allowed to search and keep the diamonds they find.
This site became an Arkansas state park in 1972, and since then, park visitors have unearthead thousands of diamonds here.Moreover,about 2 diamonds are found here every day.

And on 31st December,2006 Gary Dunlap found a 2.37 carat white diamondwhile he was searching under a tree at the world famous site.He named the diamond -The star of Thelma,after his wife.Reportedly, this was the fourth largest diamond found this year and approximately half a thousand diamonds were unearthed this year.

The first diamonds were unearthed in 1906 by John Huddleston, the farmer who at that time owned this land. Since then, over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed here. Notable diamonds from the Crater of Diamonds include the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam, [the largest diamond ever unearthed in the United States], the 16.37-carat Amarillo Starlight,the 15.33-carat Star of Arkansas and the 3.03-carat Strawn-Wagner Diamond.

In this 37.5 acre land of hope(for the visitors)..most of the stones found were white,brown and yellow.
More information about the site can be had from the official websites below::
www.craterofdiamondsstatepark.com &www.arkansasstateparks.com.