Arkansas is Home to Earth's Only Public Diamond Mine

For the price of a movie ticket, anyone can dig for diamonds at Crater of Diamonds State Park - and keep whatever they find.

Credit: Arkansas Dept. of Parks, Heritage & Tourism

The 37-acre search field near Murfreesboro sits atop an ancient volcanic pipe that erupted roughly 100 million years ago. That eruption brought diamonds that formed deep within the Earth's mantle to the surface, where they now wait in the soil for anyone with a garden trowel and patience.

Arkansas could have leased this land to a mining company. Instead, the state maintains it as the only diamond-producing site in the world where the public can search for diamonds in their original volcanic matrix and keep what they find.

Since Arkansas turned this geological oddity into a state park in 1972, visitors have found more than 35,000 diamonds. The park operates on a simple principle that sounds almost too good to exist in modern America: Everything you find belongs to you, no questions asked, no revenue sharing, no fine print. However, finding diamonds is not as easy as it sounds. But it does regularly happen.

Last month, New Yorker Micherre Fox (pictured above) began her search for a diamond for her engagement ring - and three weeks later, on her last day there, she serendipitously found the perfect 2.3-carat white diamond. “I got on my knees and cried, then started laughing,” Fox said.

The largest diamond found in the United States came from Crater of Diamonds State Park -the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam diamond, discovered in 1924 before the land became a state park. In September 2021, California visitor Noreen Wredberg found a 4.38-carat yellow diamond after searching for two hours, and in 2024, a visitor named Julien Navas found a 7.46-carat diamond at the park, reports ArsTechnica.

For those wanting to join the thousands who visit each year, the park makes it affordable. Admission costs $15 for adults, $7 for children ages 6 to 12. You can camp overnight at the park and return to the field at dawn. If diamonds aren't your thing, how about gold? The U.S. still has five places where you can look for it legally.