Crater of Diamonds State Park has turned into a gold mine for Arkansas State Parks. Treasure seekers from around the world pay $15 to hunt for rocks smaller than a pencil eraser in the only diamond mine open to the public.
The miners are enticed by stories like what happened to W. W. Johnson of Amarillo on August 20, 1975. He was resting when he spotted something sparkling in the dirt. It was a 16.37-carat diamond, still the largest found since the volcanic crater became a park in 1972.
The Crater of Diamonds is a 37-acre field plowed into furrows. Abundant stories tell of visitors “surface searching” the hillside until they see something shining in the gray dirt.
The best time to walk the field is after it has been plowed or on a sunny day after a rain.
My wife and I tried “dry sifting,” working the dirt through a box screen we rented from the park for $5. We spent the morning digging with our garden tools collecting half a baggie of gravel.
The serious miners were “wet sifting.” They filled 5-gallon buckets with dirt and carried it to a washing pavilion. A shovel of dirt at a time was rinsed in a box screen until only pebbles remained. The hope was that something shiny would be among the gravel.
After our back-wrenching work, we took our baggie of pea gravel to the staff geologist. Predictably, our collection included no diamonds. In the month before our visit more than 30 diamonds were found, most the size of a match head, so the field is not quite played out.
Crater of Diamonds State Park is in southwestern corner of Arkansas, 7 hours from Austin and 1.5 hours north of Texarkana. The park also has hiking trails, a nice campground, a museum, and a waterpark in the summer.
1,783rd in a series. Everywhere is a day trip from somewhere. Follow “Day Trips & Beyond,” a travel blog, at austinchronicle.com/day-trips.
This article appears in December 5 • 2025.