The Great Diamond Rush in Canada's Arctic

Gold rushes have given birth to towns all over Alaska. Fairbanks, for example, exists because Felix Pedro found a few nuggets of gold north of here about 100 years ago. In Canada, a stampede for diamonds is now making one of its loneliest regions a bit noisier, and a whole lot wealthier.

In the Northwest Territories, companies are extracting the equivalent of a coffee can full of diamonds each day. The gems within that can are collectively worth $1.4 million. The great diamond rush of the north began in the early 1990s.

Kevin Krajick tells the story of this modern stampede in his new book, "Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic." Krajick is a writer based in New York City who spent eight years writing his book, including many trips to one of the most remote regions of North America, the treeless northern region of Northwest Territories known as the Barren Lands. There, a prospector named Chuck Fipke in 1990 found evidence of diamonds, sparking one of the greatest mining rushes in history.

Krajick filled me in on diamonds, and why people chase them with such vigor, when I met him at a recent science conference in San Francisco.

Diamonds are a transparent form of nearly pure carbon that is much rarer than gold. People have mined about 1 million pounds of diamonds since mining began, compared to more than 260 million pounds of gold.

A diamond is the world's hardest mineral—only another diamond can scratch a diamond. Jewelry accounts for 90 percent of all diamond value, though diamonds make excellent tips for drill bits and saw blades. Diamonds are among the world's oldest minerals, some dated at 3.3 billion years, and formed deep within Earth's interior.

Extraordinary volcanic eruptions from depths of up to 500 miles carry diamonds to the surface as they erupt like geysers. These eruptions, the last of which occurred tens of millions of year ago, leave behind plugs of solidified rock called kimberlites or "diamond pipes." Prospectors look for minerals associated with kimberlites in their search for diamonds. It's a lonely quest—only about 30 of the world's 6,000 known kimberlites have become major diamond mines.

Once a prospector finds a good deposit, diamond miners must move an incredible amount of ore. One of the richest diamond mines in the world, Russia's Mir Pipe, yields about 12 grams of diamonds per 100 tons of earth. Gold miners measure deposits in pounds or even ounces per ton.

Diamond prospectors had been looking for a great North American diamond mine for 450 years, but Canada had no diamond mines before the late 1990s. The Ekati mine, about 200 miles northeast of Yellowknife and the site of Fipke's discovery, produced nearly $600 million worth of diamonds in 2000. Some experts think Canada will become the world's top producer of diamonds within 20 years, overtaking South Africa.

The rocks underlying Alaska are much younger than the rocks beneath the diamond-rich part of the Northwest Territories, so geologists say the possibility for a large diamond find in Alaska is not nearly as high. But you never know. In 1982, a miner near Central, Alaska found a diamond as he was placer mining on Crooked Creek. Two other people found diamonds near the same creek. Gold companies that already had the creek staked have drilled for diamonds in the area, but with no reported success. The diamond cartel De Beers has also been poking around in Alaska, though the company keeps its results secret.