Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
A visitor to Crater of Diamonds State Park had her ultimate wish granted when she found a diamond glittering right next to her boot.
Most guests at the park either find themselves digging or sifting for diamonds, but some luck out enough to find them on the surface.
This one park holds so many diamonds because of a volcanic vent that exploded in the area a hundred million years ago.
When Micherre Fox made the trek from New York City to the Crater of Diamonds State Park in Pike County, Arkansas, she was hoping to find a rock worthy of her engagement ring. Days of searching revealed nothing but dust, but right before she left, she unearthed a real gem—literally.
What Fox thought was a spiderweb glistening with dew in the late morning sunlight turned out to be a 2.3-carat white diamond. She almost pushed it away with the toe of her boot until she realized what she was looking at. Staff at the park’s Diamond Discovery entry confirmed that she had indeed come upon not just a diamond, but the third largest found in park this year. 366 diamonds have been registered at the park since January, and of those, only 11 that surfaced from its literal crater of diamonds were over one carat in size.
Crater of Diamonds is the result of geologic processes that took billions of years—from the migration of continents to the subduction of tectonic plates that have often caused volcanism throughout our planet’s history. And about a hundred million years ago, a volcanic vent made up of magma and gases (known as a diatreme) formed from instability in Earth’s mantle.
When gases in the diatreme caused it to rupture near the surface, the region literally exploded with diamonds, leaving behind the 83-acre crater that would someday become a state park. The area was littered with debris that had been blasted into the atmosphere, and when some of the diatreme eroded away, it left diamonds and other heavy minerals in the soil. This is why some lucky parkgoers, like Fox, may not even have to dig for a diamond. 75,000 diamonds have been found on park grounds since 1906 (long before it was officially a state park), the largest of which is now owned by the Smithsonian and on display at the National Museum of Natural History.
Diamonds don’t normally materialize at the feet of tourists. Unlike most rocks and minerals, which form relatively close to the surface, they are born deep in the mantle and tend to be anywhere from a billion to 3.5 billion years old (with the oldest being almost as ancient as Earth and older than many stars). For a diamond to become the poster child of engagement ring ads everywhere, billions of carbon atoms have to bond to each other in cubic crystal lattice structure, with each carbon atom bonded to four other carbon atoms. This usually happens at depths of 150-200 km (93-124 miles), with rarer forms crystallizing up to 800 km (almost 500 miles) below the surface.
When gobs of magma erupt from volcanoes, they take diamonds and other minerals with them. It is common for diamonds to be found embedded in magma that has hardened into a substance known as kimberlite. Known as much for their toughness as they are for their beauty, diamonds make it through being carried by magma rivers and belched out.
The idea that a diamond is forever extends far beyond wedding vows—their hardness means they will probably last through the apocalypse, and some of the strongest tools are made from diamond. Fox, for her part, is ecstatic over her find, and looking forward to her own forever.
“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,” she said in a recent park press release. When she realized what she was holding was an actual diamond, she “got on [her] knees and cried, then started laughing.”
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