If you stumble upon a sparkling, gemlike object while walking in a park called Crater of Diamonds, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume your find might be, well, a diamond. Jerry Evans wasn't quite sure, however, when he made such a discovery last spring in the Arkansas state park while taking a stroll with his girlfriend, reports CNN. "I thought it might be a piece of glass, it was so clear. I really didn't know," Evans said, per a release. "We were picking up everything thinking it was a diamond."
Spoiler alert: Evans had actually found a diamond, a 4.87-carat specimen around the size of a jelly bean, just 10 minutes after entering the 37-acre park, reports People. He spotted the shiny jewel on top of a plowed ridge and pocketed it, so he could examine it more closely when he returned home. To assist him in confirming his discovery, Evans reached out to the Gemological Institute of America, and a few weeks later they called him back with the news on his near-colorless diamond that left Evans "tickled to death," per the release.
When he contacted the park about the gem, officials there marked it as the largest one found there since Labor Day in 2020, when a 9.07-carat brown diamond was unearthed. An average of one to two diamonds are found daily at the park, with nearly 800 diamonds found already in 2023. In total, upward of 75,000 diamonds have been discovered there since the farmer who owned the land before it became a state park in the early '70s made his own initial finds. (More diamond stories.)
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