The Frenchman had flown to the United States in search of rockets—but what Julien Navas found in the end was a rock.
To be specific, it was a sparkling, 7.46-carat rock.
Visiting from Paris, Mr. Navas arrived at Cape Canaveral, Florida, to witness the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur Rocket go ballistic.
Then afterward, with time still left on his hands, Mr. Navas sought to enrich his visit further by touring some of the sights and experiences of New Orleans with a friend.
Along the way, though, Mr. Navas was unexpectedly lured elsewhere by another interest of his—besides rockets—and he changed his plans.
He learned of a dormant volcanic crater that was now a state park, near Murfreesboro, Arkansas, where visitors were invited to come sift the soil to find real diamonds. And, as the Frenchman had once panned for gold and hunted for ammonite fossils, this sparked his interest.
He slotted in a visit to the crater on his itinerary before his departure.
However, heavy rains had fallen—over an inch—in the days leading up to his planned visit, leaving the ground soupy and wet. Yet his determination was undampened.
On Jan. 11, he rose early.
“I got to the park around 9 o'clock and started to dig,” Mr. Navas told the park staff.
The site is located in what was a farmer’s field decades ago, in the middle of a volcanic formation. The first diamonds from here, at what is now Crater of Diamonds State Park, were extracted by farmer John Huddleston in 1906. The rich, volcanic soil has yielded the sparkling stones continuously ever since.
Decades after Mr. Huddleston’s discovery, the land was turned into a state park in 1972. It has become one of the few diamond-bearing sites open to the public anywhere.
Over 75,000 Diamonds have emerged from its regularly turned soils—those include the graded-perfect Strawn-Wagner Diamond, found in 1990, and Uncle Sam, found in 1924.
Mr. Navas pulled his stone from the park’s 37.5-acre search area after having purchased a ticket into the park and renting a basic diamond searching kit to sift the soil.
“That is back-breaking work so by the afternoon I was mainly looking on top of the ground for anything that stood out,” he said.
As fortune had it, the Frenchman was able to parlay the wet weather in his favor, for the rains had washed away much of the dirt from the stones that were near the surface.
From the mounds of material he’d gathered, staff helped him identify his findings inside the park’s Diamond Discovery Center. He learned he had found a 7.46-carat, deep chocolate-brown colored diamond, about the size of a gumdrop.
Stunned, Mr. Navas told the staff, “I am so happy! All I can think of is telling my fiancé what I found.”
Following the state park’s tradition, he named his gemstone, calling it the Carine Diamond after his fiancé.
“It is always so exciting to see first-time visitors find diamonds, especially large diamonds like this one!” park interpreter Sarah Reap said.
According to the park’s website, 11 diamonds have been registered at the park so far in 2024. Mr. Navas’s is the largest to be found here since Kevin Kinard unearthed his 9.07-carat Kinard Friendship Diamond over Labor Day Weekend in 2020.
And so, the Frenchman who arrived in America to catch the spectacle of a rocket launch would depart with a sparkling rock. He said he plans to have it cut and made into a ring for his fiancé.
Speaking of the unique crater, he told the staff, “It’s a magical place where the dream of finding a diamond can come true! It was a real great adventure.”
