I've been going to Middleville, NY to dig Herkimer diamonds for over 20 years. In the spring of 2007, I paid $9 to dig at the Herkimer Diamond Mines, Inc. in Middleville, NY (on route 28, about 10 minutes north of the town of Herkimer, directly across from the KOA campgrounds). At the time, I had no idea this would turn into 42 days at the mine, an article in Rocks and Minerals magazine, and 38 pockets of crystals!

I only had two days to dig, but I got lucky right away. I found a section of the wall with some table I could lift. The table is the the extremely tough horizontal rock layer in which large pockets of quartz crystals are found. I managed to remove a two foot by three foot section of the table rock and found...absolutely nothing. Pockets in the table are fairly regular ... one about every 10 to 15 square feet. So when you move a large section, you expect to find something. You can imagine my disappointment.

There was, however, some black anthraxilite dust on the wall behind the rock I had just moved. I said to a friend digging next to me that the dust looked just like what you would expect to see next to a pocket. I took my chisel and in one blow broke into a pocket (the rectangular hole is from the chisel). Then I took this picture!