A New York woman has found a 2.30-carat colorless diamond in an Arkansas state park and repurposed it as her engagement ring.
Micherre Fox, 31, of Manhattan, New York, went on a month-long hunt in July to the state’s Crater of Diamonds state park to search for gems and came up lucky on the last day, according to Arkansas state parks.
“Having never seen an actual diamond in my hands, I didn’t know for sure, but it was the most ‘diamond-y diamond’ I had seen,” Fox told the park service.
The service said it was the third largest of 366 diamonds found in the park this year. It describes the Crater of Diamonds – a 37-acre, eroded surface of a volcanic crater near Murfreesboro, as “the only place in the world where the public can search for real diamonds in their original volcanic source.”
“Any rock or mineral you find is yours to keep,” it says. “You may bring your own mining equipment to search with (no battery-operated or motor-driven mining tools allowed), or rent tools from the park.”
Waymon Cox, assistant superintendent of the park, said Fox’s digging story “highlights the fact that, even when putting forth your best effort, being in the right place at the right time plays a part in finding diamonds”.
Fox’s story comes with a message of self-determination. She decided two years ago that she wanted to find her own diamond for an engagement ring, telling the park service that “there’s something symbolic about being able to solve problems with money, but sometimes money runs out in a marriage. You need to be willing and able to solve those problems with hard work.”
Her partner, and presumably prospective husband, was supportive of the project.
“I was willing to go anywhere in the world to make that happen,” Fox said. “I researched, and it turned out that the only place in the world to do it was right in our back yard, in Arkansas.”
When she spotted something glistening at her feet, Fox thought it could be a dew-covered spiderweb. But she soon realized it was a shiny stone.
The park identified it as a diamond.
“I got on my knees and cried, then started laughing,” she said.
Most of the diamonds found in the volcanic crater are white, brown and yellow. In total, over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed there since diamonds were discovered in 1906. The largest discovered, at 40.23 carats, is named Uncle Sam, and now sits on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
The dig-your-own/bring-a-trowel trend may catch-on as a signal of commitment, since the allure of diamonds is on the rocks.
Lab-grown diamonds, created in plasma reactors, have badly damaged the natural diamond market, the Guardian reported earlier this year. Prices for both, lab-grown and natural, are falling fast and show no signs of stopping.
De Beers, the biggest name in diamonds, said it began 2024 with a huge $2bn stockpile of diamonds and had not managed to shift it by the year’s end. The company has cut production in its mines by 20%, and its owner, Anglo American, has put it up for sale.
