The stone sparkled as Will Barnett sifted his mesh screen in the trough of water, the facets winking at him amid the loose soil and debris.
“Hey Marshall, you should take a look at this!” Mr. Barnett told his son, who snatched up the shiny rock from his father’s screen in a flash before excitedly asking the experienced miner nearby him whether or not it was a real diamond.
The shiny object was the color of iced tea, rectangular in shape, and about the size of a pencil eraser. They would have it appraised by officials at the state park known as Crater of Diamonds, where they were mining on a diamond-bearing volcanic field, the world’s only diamond mine open to the public to freely sift and search.
Both father and son had arrived, shovels and buckets in hand, earlier that day on a “boys only” summer trip to spend quality time together and try their luck. Screens were rented from the park, and soon the fellas were pitching dirt into buckets by the shovel full before lugging their haul over to the pavilion where wet sifting facilities are stationed.
That’s when Mr. Barnett spotted on the bottom of his mesh the stone his son had unearthed, and the pair began shaking with excitement, park staff said in a press release.
“You could tell they knew they had found something special from the smiles on their faces,” park superintendent Caleb Howell said.
Appraisal of the faceted stone confirmed it was a 2-carat diamond.
“The first thing I noticed was two large facets that really shined when the light hit them just right,” Mr. Howell said.
The Barnett boys had road tripped over 1,300 miles to Arkansas all the way from their home in Buckeye, Arizona, in July, after Marshall’s uncle, who works as a park interpreter for another Arkansas park, let them know about the Crater of Diamonds. All of that driving and digging paid off.
Crater of Diamonds bore its first precious stones when it was a farmer’s field in 1906, owned by John Huddleston, before it became a state park in 1972. Over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed here so far. The largest was a 40.23-carat white diamond with a pink cast named Uncle Sam, the largest diamond ever found in the United States, which was found in a mining operation in 1924. It now sits in the Smithsonian.
Following state park tradition, Marshall named his diamond, too.
“Minor Find,” so named because Marshall’s dad often refers to him as a “minor miner,” was registered as the park’s 412th diamond found this year, the 36,500th found ever at Crater of Diamonds, and also the second largest of 2024. On average, two diamonds are found here each day, and the soil is tilled regularly to turn up sparkling new yields, the park states.
“It’s worth looking, even if you don’t find a diamond!” Mr. Barnett said.
