TEXARKANA -- Visitors, bloggers and websites often perpetuate four common myths about the Crater of Diamonds State Park's diamonds and its search field, according to Margi Jenks, park interpreter.
The myths have become similar to urban legends and fish tales, which are difficult to dispel, she said.
To shed a little light on the truth about diamonds and the park, Jenks shared some of what she has learned in her six years as a park interpreter.
The first myth is that diamonds feel greasy or oily.
Because diamonds are made of carbon, they can't produce grease or oil, Jenks said.
Diamonds have very little static electric charge. They're very slick, so what people perceive as grease or oil is actually the natural slickness of the stone, Jenks said.
Another myth is that the park puts monetary values on diamonds and/or buys diamonds, which isn't true, Jenks said. None of the park's employees is a registered gemologist, so none of them can tell the worth of stones found at the park or of those belonging to visitors. Instead, the park refers visitors to several registered gemologists in Arkansas who are familiar with the park's diamonds and with appraising rough diamonds, Jenks said.
The third myth Jenks is familiar with is that park employees ask some of the regular diamond miners to save up their large diamonds to be registered when the park needs some publicity.
Jenks said she finds this myth amusing. If anyone finds or thinks that they have found a large diamond, word of that diamond goes around the search area at lightning speed, she said.
Anyone who finds a large diamond is just too excited to keep it to themselves, Jenks said. Sometimes the park staff members hear rumors of a large diamond even before it is carried in to be registered. Jenks said her experience suggests that big stones rarely take more than a day for the finders to register them. Also, she said, many who dig up large gems often don't realize what they have found. They take the diamond to the identification desk mixed in with all their other rocks and then are surprised when it's identified as a large diamond, she said.
Then the celebration really begins, she said. Word flies around the park so quickly that soon the park's maintenance workers are stopping by to look at that big diamond. She said she has found over the years that the park generally gets so much publicity that it doesn't need to make up situations.
The fourth myth is that the search field is salted with diamonds, Jenks said.
This myth is the thorniest and has been around the longest, Jenks said. She said her research shows the story started with the first diamond finds in the early 1900s. To dispel the rumors, the earliest miners worked hard and long to find a diamond embedded in the diamond crater's volcanic ash and lava.
They found that embedded diamond and had solid evidence that all the dug-up diamonds actually came from the area of what is now the park's current search field, Jenks said.
"Today, I believe that all anyone needs to think about is the number of diamonds, 559 ... in 2014, that are found every year out on the search field," Jenks said. "My experience shows that our visitors find diamonds in every corner of our 37.5-acre search field. Also, over the last 40-plus years, visitors have found more than 31,000 diamonds."
She said Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism Director Richard Davies' comments at a Nashville Rotary Club meeting a couple of years ago captured it best.
"He said that he couldn't imagine going to the Legislature every year and asking for several million dollars to buy diamonds to put out on our search field," Jenks said. "I like the fact that each diamond finder has found their own unique diamond from the volcanic crater at Arkansas' diamond mine."
Metro on 01/11/2015