Mining Diamonds from Alluvial / Gravel Deposits

There is a forgotten source of wealth in many of our streams and rivers, and that is diamonds in Alluvial deposits (gravels and sands).

It is odd that in some of the placer gold rush areas, there were these tiny quartz rocks that would stick in the black sand area of quite a few sluice boxes.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), these small translucent stones were actually diamonds.
Often confused with quartz, these compressed carbon treasures represent the last frontier in undiscovered richness, patiently waiting in many of our rivers and streams.

Firstly, I'd better give you a little history on the hows and whys of these magnificent carbon stones.

In the Beginning....

All diamonds started as carbon pieces that were trapped 150-250 miles down in the earth's mantle, when our world was formed. Time, pressure and heat hyper-compressed carbon (black soft powder), into a highly compressed, organized, crystalline structural diamond. What started as a soft powder that is one of the most common substances in the universe, became a rare, incredibly hard, brilliant stone, with amazing optical properties.

 One galaxy's garbage is another galaxy's treasure (unwanted carbon)

Most diamonds are a minimum of one billion years old. Volcanic eruptions are what makes these stones accessible to us. These lava flows from volcanoes are diamonds' highway to the surface. Not all volcanoes transport our carbon friends to ground level, only a select few do.
These ancient, cooled lava tubes are called kimberlite pipes.

So, yadda, yadda, yadda... move ahead millions of years, and you have our earth today. A lot of geological history has passed since these prehistoric kimberlite eruptions, but the diamond has survived because it is immensely hard (hardness of 10), and has had time to settle to bedrock or become trapped in glacial tailing piles since the last ice age.

Now, this is where you come in

The reason I gave the brief history lesson on the hows and whys is to help you understand that “the lay of the stones is not random.”

Nature and time have PLACED our carbon friends within our reach. There are diamonds hidden under sand and gravel (placer) deposits.

So, we are looking for:

Bedrock

Glacial tailing piles

Blue Clay

Ancient river beds

Alluvial outflows from rivers

And diamond indicators:

Garnets

Kimberlite

More information available in our "Where to Find & Mine Diamonds" info package.

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