Everyone loves diamonds and the thought of findings some is just a secret wish of many treasure hunters. We all know that diamonds are just not here in the United States in any great quantity, except maybe in Arkansas. But if you’d like to go for it we have a story that comes to us from the old Los Angeles Record, and the best part, the location is just outside Las Vegas. So if you don’t find anything in the desert you can return to Las Vegas and enjoyed the glitter anyhow.

The story starts in the spring of 1872 when a seasoned prospector, B.M. Lawrence, left Salt Lake City for the newly discovered silver mines at Ivanpah, San Bernardino County, California. With his outfit of pack animals he had planned to follow the Mormon Trail through the Pahranagat Valley and across the Amargosa Desert to the Mormon settlement of San Bernardino.

On reaching the old Steward ranch, which is now the site of Las Vegas, Nevada and after resting a few days, Lawrence trekked out to the hills between the ranch and the Colorado River, a distance of about 25 miles, to do some prospecting. He knew that gold had been found on both sides of the river, but he was not looking for gold in particular, just prospecting.

On his third day out, he was, as near as he could guess, about 20 miles south of the Steward ranch, where there was a considerable showing of volcanic formations. His attention was attracted to a peculiar looking bluish streak through the malapal. Digging into this he uncovered a blue mud seam running at right angles from the general formation.

He had never seen anything like it so he took out about 20 pounds of the blue mud and took it back to the ranch. In washing out the mud he recovered a handful of crystal that he stowed away in a sack and resume his journey to Ivanpah, a distance of about 70 miles.

After prospecting around the Ivanpah district for some time he located the famous Stonewall mine from which he took several fortunes in black metal . . . silver.

It was fully a year after he found the crystals that he had occasion to visit San Bernardino, the county seat, even at that early day quite a prosperous little city.

He took along the sack of pebbles as he called them and submitted them to a jeweler to find out just what the darn things were. however, it did not take the jeweler long to ascertain that Lawrence’s pebbles were first water blue white diamonds ranging in weight from one to three and a half carat.

Lawrence was flush with money received from his ore, which ran from 100 to 200 ounces a ton. He made a host of friends and, being a good fellow, he distributed his diamonds among them.

“I can get plenty more where these came from,” he boasted . . . These were to be famous last words, for he never got anymore.

The reason, he was never again able to find the blue mud vein that they had come from, and from 1873 to 1917 he devoted three months out of each year trying to locate it.

He returned to the Steward ranch and tried to follow the route he took from there . . . Time and time again he would start out from the ranch and try to follow the trail he took to the hills and to where he found the blue mud, always unsuccessful.

In later years he told a number of his “Desert Rat” friends, of his find, and they joined him in the search, only to be met with the same disappointment.

So... reader think you can find something as easy as a blue spot in the middle of the desert?