Crater of Diamonds State Park

Crater of Diamonds State Park is a 911-acre park that manages a diamond mine where visitors can, for a nominal fee, search for diamonds and keep any that they find. Diamonds were first discovered here in 1906 by John Wesley Huddleston, a farmer who owned land on the southern end of the present-day search area. Soon after he made his first discoveries, his neighbor, W.W. Mauney, discovered diamonds on his land as well. The largest diamond found at the mine so far is the "Uncle Sam" diamond, found in 1924 by Wesley Oley Basham, who was nicknamed "Uncle Sam," and who was an employee of the Arkansas Diamond Corporation, one of the many companies which operated mining operations on the site between 1906 and 1969. The stone weighed 40.23 carats (0.28 oz.; 8.05 g) at its finding, but was cut twice, arriving at a final weight of 12.42 carats (0.08 oz.; 2.48 g). The site became an Arkansas State Park in 1972. Reliable records from the time before the site became a state park do not exist, but between 1972 and 2021 (the last year for which data was available as of writing), 34,492 diamonds were discovered at the site and registered by the park. These diamonds weighed in aggregate 6,913.82 carats (3 lb., 0.78 oz.; 1.3828 kg).