I have taken my kids a few times. I recommend bringing your own tools however you can rent them there. They do have a washing station but I always brought in several spray water bottles to wash away the dirt from the dirt. You are pretty much on your own on a large piece of land. I brought a pop up canopy , several chairs, lunch, and all the stuff I needed for the dig.
If you think you find a diamond, you take the stone to the park ranger up the hill and he will let you know if you found a diamond. If you did then a siren will sound and he will box the diamond up for you.
Everything that Penny said, plus I'll add some of my own experiences from this past March.
First thing: do not go in March. It's colder than kraut. Maybe some Canadians or Maine folks could handle dunking their hands in 40-something degree water, but I was ready to pack it in, after about an hour of that. Luckily, that was the last morning, so pack it up, I did.
I took my fam over Spring Break, which for Texas schools is the middle of March. Did I mention don't go in March? Okay, I'll stop with the March.
The "diamond mine" is indeed a giant dirt field, full of plowed rows. At first glance, it's a bit disappointing. I had envisioned... I dunno. Something that did not look like tromped down cow pasture.
But heck, who cares what it looks like, yeah? This is where the biggest diamond ever found in the United States was dug up. This is where the only perfectly flawless diamond in the WORLD was dug up. This is where the diamonds are, to paraphrase Spinal Tap, turned up to eleven. Serio... the diamonds here are harder than any other Mohs scale-rated diamonds... these diamonds are 11.
Yeah, you can either bring your own gear or rent gear. The advantage to renting sifting screens, I discovered, is that if you make your own awesome sifting screens (as I did), you might discover you left out one level of awesomeness, which is to allow the screens to fit together, nice and tight. So, next trip, I'll bring my own digging gear, but prolly rent screens from the park. It's only a few bucks, not bad, at all.
I also brought little plastic pill bottles with those screw-on lids, into which a fella might drop potential stones. Also bring a good magnifying glass, because most of the stones found are very very small. As in, measured in points, not carats. The first morning we were there, around 10 am, the loudspeaker came on and announced a fella had found the first THREE diamonds of the day... but these were little-bitty... I think it was 7 pt, 8 pt and 10 pt. Mind you, I'd love to have found even one little-bitty diamond... I didn't find squat, but it was my first trip, so I chalked it up to learning and thinking in terms of, "Okay, NEXT time, this is what I can do better..."
What you can't do better is luck, tho'. There are just as many stories of people literally kicking over the right dirt clod, on their way out of the park, and picking up a 3 carat yellow diamond, as there are stories of folks like the aforementioned little-bitty diamond hunter. One fella stopped off into the park, because his wife wanted to hunt around... he really didn't, so he just sorta aimlessly kicked dirt around and boom, picked up a giant yellow diamond. Same thing, but with a pre-teen girl... on her way out of the park, with her family, looks down, boom, picks up a giant yellow diamond.
So you just never know.
Here's a couple of other things to keep in mind... if you can get out there, right after a rain, especially in the early morning, rain tends to reveal diamonds and the sunlight will light em up from many feet away. I know a woman who has found two 1+ carat diamonds that way.
Also, if you can get a straight answer from a park official, call ahead and ask when the fields were plowed or will next be plowed. It's not very often, maybe once a season, from what I was able to gather. When we went, the rows were hard as concrete... dunno when they'd last been plowed, but since then, many thousands of feet had tromped the dirt down, hard-pack.
In an ideal situation, I think you'd want to have a recent rain on a recently plowed field. That'll help your luck something fierce, I think. It's what I'm aiming for, next time I drive over.
Oh, and as to the gold and detecting... I did not see anyone detecting, nor did I see/hear anything about detecting. Same with gold. But there are other great rocks to be found, besides diamonds... semi-precious stones like topaz and amethyst, if I recall correct. Even some plant fossils. Anything you find, you can march up the hill to the ranger station/rental station, and a park rep will tell you exactly what each doodad is, one by one. Which is pretty cool.
You can camp in the park and wander over to dig or you can stay in one of three motels, in town. There are lots of places with examples of diamonds found at the crater, in town... you can drool over glass cases, almost everywhere but the local Sonic Drive-In.
That's off the top of my head... if I think of anything else, I'll add it, later.
Did I mention don't go in March?
