Dig diamonds? Go south.
Amateur diamond prospecting picks up steam in Arkansas.
from the May 4, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
"Skill is a factor," she says. Practice helps. She has seen some "pretty interesting" tactics tried. "People pitching dirt sideways into a big screen," she says, "all kinds of screen contraptions."
Most visitors here on a recent afternoon hunt casually, like beachgoers looking for sea glass. Cars in the lot bear plates from as far away as Colorado and Minnesota. Families roam in foam cowboy hats. Kids carry plastic pails.
Anita Terry, from nearby Heber Springs, is a first-timer here with her husband and their grandson, Caleb. She's not counting on a gem, she says, pulling up her hood against a cold breeze as Caleb flicks shovels of dirt into the air.
Mark Belter tries wet-sifting at one of the sluicing stations after watching Engebrecht's demonstration. He's just taking a break from post-hurricane rebuilding back home in Covington, La., he says. Today he's keeping his windbreaker clean.
Others are clearly more driven. In wading boots and gloves, Travis Christner, from Richmond, Mich., claws at the walls of a four-foot pit he has dug under a red umbrella not far from the marked spot where the 8.82-carat "Star of Shreveport" was found in 1981. He and his wife first came here last spring and found a quarter-carat brown diamond.
Mr. Christner knows another couple from back home who find a dozen chips or more here in a good year; they make small pieces of jewelry with their finds. Christner has dug for garnets, emeralds, and sapphires in North Carolina. But in this corner of Arkansas studded with onxy caves and crystal mines, he has something more precious on his mind.
"Diamonds are special," he says. "And where else can you go and just dig them up?"
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