Visitor finds huge 7.46-carat diamond in Crater of Diamonds State Park
A spur-of-the-minute detour led to a “real great adventure” for a Parisian visitor to the United States. Julien Navas, who was visiting the US from France to see the launch of the first US moon landing mission in decades from Cape Canaveral, Florida, also ventured to New Orleans. Along the way, learned about the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas, according to a news release from Arkansas State Parks.
Having panned for gold and searched for ammonite fossils before, and the park caught his interest. On January 11, Navas arrived at the park, bought his ticket, and rented a basic diamond hunting kit, according to the news release. “I got to the park around nine o’clock and started to dig,” Navas said in the release. “That is back-breaking work, so by the afternoon I was mainly looking on top of the ground for anything that stood out.”
Lucky for Navas, the park had received more than an inch of rain a few days before he arrived, so it was wet and muddy, the release said. “As rain falls on the field, it washes away the dirt and uncovers heavy rocks, minerals and diamonds near the surface,” Assistant Park Superintendent Waymon Cox explained.
Many of the park’s biggest diamonds are found on the surface, Cox said, and the park periodically plows the 37.5 acre search area to loosen the soil and to promote natural erosion. Eventually, Navas emerged at the park’s Diamond Discovery Center with his findings. There, he was told he had found a 7.46-carat brown diamond.
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