Tourist Discovers Massive 7.46-Carat Diamond at Arkansas' Crater of Diamonds State Park

Declan Gallagher
·2 min read

A tourist from France made a remarkable 7.46-carat find during his first trip to Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds, the park announced. Paris resident Julien Navas traveled to America along with a friend to witness the Vulcan Centaur launch in Cape Canaveral, FL. Afterward, they traveled through New Orleans, where they heard about Arkansas’ famous 37.5-acre state park. Navas had panned for gold and searched for ammonite fossils during previous vacations, so he knew he had to try his hand at diamond hunting.

"I got to the park around nine o'clock and started to dig," Navas told Crater of Diamonds officials. "That is back-breaking work so by the afternoon I was mainly looking on top of the ground for anything that stood out."

Almost as an afterthought, he picked up what first appeared to be a large, shiny brown rock. Only when he took his finds to the park’s Diamond Discovery Center did he realize the magnitude of his discovery. Navas was carrying a brown diamond weighing a whopping 7.46 carats. The park described his find as being “about the size of a candy gumdrop,” colored “a deep chocolate brown…and rounded like a marble.”

“I am so happy!” Navas gushed when he was made aware of the discovery. “All I can think about is telling my fiancée what I found.”

The park’s assistant superintendent, Waymon Cox, reported that most major finds actually occur on the surface, rather than beneath the ground. “We periodically plow the search area to loosen the diamond-bearing soil and promote natural erosion,” Cox said. “As rain falls on the field, it washes away the dirt and uncovers heavy rocks, minerals, and diamonds near the surface.”

The lucky winner hopes to return with his daughter when she is old enough to scour for diamonds herself. “It is a magical place,” Navas said of the park, “where the dream of finding a diamond can come true! It was a real great adventure.”

The park reports that one or two diamonds are found each day at the crater. 11 have been found so far in 2024. More than 75,000 diamonds have been found on the acreage in total. In 2019, a 14-year-old discovered a 7.44-carat "Superman" diamond. The same year, another tourist found an 8.52-carat white diamond. The largest diamond discovered in the U.S. was found in 1924 on the land which now homes the park.