A special find in a national park causes a stir: In the US state of Arkansas, David Anderson found a 3.29 carat brown diamond in the crater of Diamonds State Park. For Anderson, who lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, it’s not the first diamond he’s found. He says he’s found more than 400 diamonds since 2007. “After finding my first diamond, a 1.5 ct white diamond, I was hooked.”
The park is not unknown to diamond fans: one or two diamonds are found every day in the 37.5 hectare official diamond search zone. More than 75,000 diamonds have been found here since 1906, including the largest diamond ever discovered in the United States. However, most of them are smaller – even smaller than David Anderson’s diamond, which weighs more than three carats.
The last major find was from the end of 2021: At that time, a visitor found a diamond weighing 4.38 carats. Anderson himself also found a 3.83 carat and a 6.19 carat diamond in the national park. However, neither of them could compete with the absolute record find in the national park: It weighed more than 40 carats and was discovered in 1924.
Diamond prospecting is a lucrative business for the park: visitors can rent digging and sieving tools on site in return for taking home any stones they find. Park rangers also offer visitors help in identifying rocks and minerals found on site – free of charge. For David Anderson, the pea-sized light brown diamond was definitely not the last find.
What: BBC
