Finders keepers: state park’s policy.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: One lucky woman has found an 8.52 carat, pure white diamond at Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park after only 20 minutes of searching.
Bobbie Oskarson, of Longmont, dubbed it the “Esperanza Diamond” after her niece.
Clear white and icicle shaped, the gem is the fifth largest diamond found by a park visitor since the state park was established at Arkansas’s diamond site in 1972, according to the Business Standard.
Oskarson found the gem in the 37-acre area of the park known as the Pig Pen, named because of how much of a quagmire the terrain becomes after a hard rain, reported Times Gazette News.
“Ms Oskarson’s eight-and-a-half-carat diamond is absolutely stunning, sparkling with a metallic shine, and appears to be an unbroken, capsule-shaped crystal,” Park Interpreter Waymon Cox said. “It features smooth, curved facets, a characteristic shared by all unbroken diamonds from the Crater of Diamonds,” he continued.
Oskarson’s find is the 227th diamond certified by park staff this year. Cox noted that more than 30 other diamonds have been found on the surface of the Pig Pen thus far in 2015, due in part to frequent rains.
According to the park’s website, the largest diamond ever found in the United States was discovered on its grounds in 1924, which was 40 carats in size and is colloquially referred to as the Uncle Sam Diamond.
It is the only location in the world that is a known diamond producer and is still open to the public. The park continues to attract a steady flock of tourists who hope to strike it rich and it adheres to a strict policy of “finders, keepers.”