MURFREESBORO, Ark.—His friends razzed him. His wife rolled her eyes. But whenever Bob Wehle could get away, the warehouse manager from Wisconsin would head to the Crater of Diamonds in search of treasure.

Last month, Wehle was sifting soil through a stainless steel screen when he picked up a peculiar pebble. It was gleaming, the color of a lemon drop.

 

  Sunshine 5.47-carat canary yellow gem of unusual clarity found today. For $6, you can hunt for precious gems. One or two find something most days.

"Now that is a diamond!" he recalled hollering. It was a serious sparkler indeed: a 5.47-carat canary yellow gem of unusual clarity. He called it Sunshine.

"My wife, she's okay with this now," Wehle, 36, said with a chuckle. "My friends, they're not laughing at me anymore.''

The discovery of Sunshine was another glittering chapter in the legend of Arkansas' Crater of Diamonds State Park, one of the more unusual public attractions in America.

For a $6 fee, visitors can scour the mouth of an ancient volcano in search of a priceless stone. Most days one or two get lucky, as a 9-year-old from Illinois did this spring when she scooped up a clear white diamond with her toy shovel, naming it Sparkles. The 50,000 who visit each year find ground rules that are tantalizingly simple: finders keepers.

"It's like going to Las Vegas and pulling the lever on a slot machine," said Alan Opel, 58, of Monrovia, Calif., summarizing the park's appeal after a day of mucking through the mud in vain. "Only here, the chance to hit the jackpot costs a whole lot less.''

Since an illiterate farmer named John Huddleston found what he called "diamints" here a century ago while preparing to plant turnips, this gravelly, greenish patch of dirt about two hours from Little Rock has yielded more than 75,000 diamonds: shimmering marvels worth thousands as well as brownish stones too cloudy to cut into jewels. It continues to attract dreamers in search of instant riches; cheapskate fiances desperate for free engagement diamonds; and die-hard rock hounds yearning to uncover a gem so precious that it will grant them immortality.

Murfreesboro (pop. 1,800) long ago capitalized on the public's fascination with precious stones. Restaurants and souvenir shops that ring the old courthouse at the centre of town and hotels such as the Queen of Diamonds Inn and Diamond John's Riverside Retreat cater to starry-eyed tourists.

The state park also features a campground, a small water park, a shop that sells gems and diamond-themed knick-knacks, and booths where prospectors can rent shovels and screens. Many families bring picnic baskets for a daylong outing, but more than a few leave early once they realize that finding a diamond is difficult.

Diamonds often are spotted right on the surface, especially after a hard rain washes dirt off the stones. But most are found through a laborious process: scooping buckets of dirt, sifting it through screens and scanning the gravel. Park officials turn over the top layers of soil every month to give tourists a fighting chance.

"You have to have a passion for it, because it's not going to come easy. You get out of it what you put into it," said Eric Blake, 31, a carpenter from Wisconsin who visits the crater with his fiancee several times a year. He has uncovered more than two dozen diamonds, none of any real value. As he spoke, he unrolled a cellophane cigarette wrapper and rolled out a scrawny diamond he had discovered that morning. It was opaque and pinkish white.

"The fact is that most of the material that comes from there is not very valuable; the diamonds are clouded," said William G. Underwood, 74, a Fayetteville jeweller who was the first certified gemologist in Arkansas.

Still, most of the major diamonds found in the United States were found at the park. The largest, named Uncle Sam, was discovered in 1924 and weighed in at 40.25 carats. The biggest found since the site became a state park in 1972, a 16.37-carat diamond named Amarillo Starlight, was spotted in 1975 by a Texan on vacation with his family.

The diamonds are the pride of Arkansas: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wore the Kahn Canary, an uncut 4.25-carat diamond found at the field, to both of President Clinton's inaugural galas in homage to the Natural State. A diamond also appears on the commemorative Arkansas state quarter.

Of the more than 435 diamonds found this year at the crater, Wehle's Sunshine is the second largest. A Texas couple found a 6.35-carat brown diamond in September, though it is considered less valuable because of its colour. The Okie Dokie diamond, a 4.21-carat canary yellow gem found in March by an Oklahoma state trooper who had heard about the park on the History Channel, was valued by Sotheby's auction house at between $15,000 (all figures U.S.) and $60,000. Sunshine is similar in quality, said park officials who saw both stones.

Wehle has travelled to the park several times a year since 2003 after watching a television show called The Hunt For Amazing Treasures.

He had found four diamonds before coming across Sunshine last month while sifting his 14th bucket of dirt.

Such are the stories that fill the minds of tourists with visions of easy wealth. But after a few hours on the Crater of Diamonds, most realize — sadly — that fortune will never be with them.

"This is for the birds!" said Doris Postoak of Oklahoma, who drove to the park for the first time to test her luck on her 72nd birthday. "You can't find nothing in all this mud."

Los Angeles Times