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All the United States Arkansas Murfreesboro Mauney House and Mine

Mauney House and Mine

The remains of the first public diamond mine in Arkansas.

Murfreesboro, Arkansas

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Brooke Roegge
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The house.   typosinkeye / Atlas Obscura User
Close-up of the porch columns.   typosinkeye / Atlas Obscura User
Inside.   Jamie Brandon
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About

Nearby Crater of Diamonds State Park champions itself as the only place in the world where the public can dig for diamonds. But that famous attraction may have never existed if it hadn’t been for a man named Millard M. Mauney.

In the early 1900s, Murfreesboro, Arkansas, resident John Wesley Huddleston discovered diamonds on his property. Experts were brought to the area and confirmed the land near Murfreesboro was indeed rich with the precious gems. Huddleston's neighbor Mauney, who owned 40 acres of diamond-bearing soil nearby, saw a money-making opportunity in the discovery.

With a newly installed train running to Murfreesboro from Nashville, Tennessee, Mauney gambled on the belief tourists and miners might be willing to travel to Arkansas for the chance to hunt for diamonds. Mauney and his sons cleared their field, plowing and harrowing it to help bring diamonds to the surface. They charged visitors $.50 for the chance to sift through the dirt, with the promise visitors could keep anything they found. Within the first month of business, visitors were finding diamonds, including one 8.1 carat gem. Guests used one of Mauney's houses, a log cabin built in the 1830s, as a gathering place while visiting the mine.

However, the mine was short-lived. Huddleston's finds, which had occurred many years earlier, had garnered the interest of investors, but those investors had already moved on by the time Mauney opened his mine. Subsequently, the infrastructure needed to bring more visitors to the area was never put into place and tourism to the area largely dried up. One year after opening the mine, Mauney closed up shop and sold shares of the property and leased his remaining land to corporations.

Since then, the land went through a series of owners before finally winding up in the hands of the State of Arkansas, along with the land once owned by Huddleston. Today, tourists flock to what is now Crater of Diamonds State Park and do what Mauney initially envisioned—pay a small fee to sift through the dirt in the hopes of finding a diamond they can call their own.

Related Tags

Mines Gems And Jewels Diamonds Houses Homes

Know Before You Go

The site is not listed on Google Maps, but you can't miss it while driving down Highway 301 (aka South Washington Avenue) into Crater of Diamonds State Park. Take Highway 301 south of Murfreesboro, and after the road curves to the east, you'll see the house on the left side right before you enter the woods.

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typosinkeye

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Kerry Wolfe

  • Kerry Wolfe

Published

May 1, 2018

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Sources
  • http://www.craterofdiamondsstatepark.com/history/history-of-the-diamond-mine.aspx
  • http://www.pcahs.org/Arkansas_Diamonds/idxFr2.htm
  • http://www.pcahs.org/Arkansas_Diamonds/MMMauney.htm
  • http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=7173
  • http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/media-detail.aspx?mediaID=10128
  • https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/murfreesboro-954/
Mauney House and Mine
2079-2099 AR-301
Murfreesboro, Arkansas
United States
34.042535, -93.684282
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Nearby Places

Crater of Diamonds State Park

Murfreesboro, Arkansas

miles away

The Gurdon Light

Gurdon, Arkansas

miles away

Hoo-Hoo International Office and Museum

Gurdon, Arkansas

miles away

Explore the Destination Guide

Photo of Murfreesboro

Murfreesboro

Arkansas

Places 2

Nearby Places

Crater of Diamonds State Park

Murfreesboro, Arkansas

miles away

The Gurdon Light

Gurdon, Arkansas

miles away

Hoo-Hoo International Office and Museum

Gurdon, Arkansas

miles away

Explore the Destination Guide

Photo of Murfreesboro

Murfreesboro

Arkansas

Places 2

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