Episode 1 of 1
Exposure of the Diamond Hoax
- When
- 1872
- Where
- northwest Colorado
Clarence King and his crew tracked down the secret location in northwest Colorado, exposing the diamond deposit as a fraud.
King, an American geologist, investigated the claims made by prospectors Philip Arnold and John Slack. The pair had sold a non-existent diamond deposit to prominent businessmen. King's investigation revealed the site in northwest Colorado was fraudulent, debunking the hoax that had triggered a prospecting craze in the western United States.
Sources
- Clarence King Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-31
- Great Diamond Hoax Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-24
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.