With a Shovel and a Dream, Woman Finds 2.3 Carat Diamond in Arkansas

By the end of her trip, Micherre Fox had almost made peace with the fact that she would leave Arkansas with nothing but bug bites and tattered hiking boots.

For three weeks, Ms. Fox, who lives in Manhattan, had been camping at Crater of Diamonds State Park and going out to dig for gems each day. She rose before dawn, paid the $15 entry fee, walked the half-mile to the fields with her battered tools, and dug, sifted and rinsed until her hands ached. She was on a mission: to find a diamond for her engagement ring.

Wake, walk, work, hope. Repeat.

On her last day there, she slept in and planned to search for an amethyst instead.

“I was coming to terms with the fact I was likely leaving without a diamond,” she said.

But then, as she carried her fourth bucket of dirt to the water pool where diggers rinse their finds, she saw a glimmer in a spider web on the ground, nudging it with her boot. But what looked like glistening dew did not rub off. In fact, it was a shiny stone.

Later that day, after sharing the news with her boyfriend, Ms. Fox cried tears of joy: “I’m just like: Oh my god. That was an impossible thing, and I did it and I am proud of that.”

Crater of Diamonds Park officials later confirmed: Ms. Fox, 31, had found a 2.3-carat white diamond, the third-largest find this year. Of 366 diamonds registered so far in 2025, only 11 weighed more than a carat.

Annie Dye, a gemologist based in New York State, said the depending on the final cut, clarity, color and carat weight, the diamond could be worth anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000. The couple have yet to get it appraised, so its precise value remains unknown.

Most days, diggers take their finds to the park’s experts to learn what they found. The park has a “finders, keepers” policy, making anything they dig up theirs to take home at no added cost. But often, it’s one of three less-valuable rocks: smooth brown jasper; angular quartz; or soft and brittle calcite.

Every so often, someone makes a historic find. Like, Bobbie Oskarson, of Longmont, Colo., who found a white, 8.52-carat diamond in June 2015.

Ms. Fox, who had just graduated with a master’s degree in management from Fordham University in New York, had come for adventure and to find a jewelry piece she could dig from the ground herself.

When she and her partner began to talk about marriage two years ago, she quickly realized she wanted to find a diamond rather than buy one. In addition to avoiding the exploitative diamond mining industry, this stone would represent the kind of work marriage would require, she felt, and show her commitment.

“There are countless things that will happen that you can’t just solve with money,” Ms. Fox said, “and in those moments, you need to be able to roll your sleeves up and show up every day and do really hard work to keep that thing going.”

For her, “this was an opportunity for me to symbolically commit to doing that work,” she added.

Friends and family called the trip ridiculous, and perfectly her. Each year she felt compelled to do something hard, maybe a little dangerous, and answer what her partner refers to as her “calls to the wild.”

So she went.

The days passed in their dusty rhythm. There was the walk from her tent in the campgrounds, the sounds of hand shovels piercing the earth, sieves rattling loose minerals from clay.

There were setbacks.

About a week in, she got bitten up by chiggers, which left her itching for weeks.

Almost a week later, her hand shovel was stolen, forcing her to dig with her bare hands until her nails were worn down.

Two days after that, the soles of her brown boots flapped, like old paint peeling from a wall, with each step.

“Socks were probably peeking out like two days after that,” Ms. Fox said.

Still, the field called.

By midmorning of final day, after eight miles of walking to a nearby town to treat herself to an iced latte, she reached the 37 acres of plowed brown fields.

It was then that she came across what looked like a spider web beaded with dew in the dirt.

With a hint of reluctance, she bent down, still carrying a heavy bucket, and picked up what she thought would turn out to be a mica stone. Small as a canine tooth, it caught the light differently. Oily, metallic.

“I kept telling myself, ‘It’s just glass with silver paint,’” she said.

Two days earlier, she had watched that exact heartbreak happen to another digger.

Still, she thought: This is my best shot so far. For weeks, she had been fooled by wet quartz and mica — fool’s gold, as the state park’s staff calls it.

She clinched the stone in her fist, dirt still clinging to her hands. Around her, the field hummed with the quiet industry of strangers who did not yet know that a diamond had just left the ground. She began the walk to the gemologist’s office.

A three-minute stroll, she recalled, that felt closer to 30. She kept her pace slow. Trying to stay level and not get her hopes up.

At the gemologist’s desk, where most hopefuls learn in seconds they do not have a diamond, she placed the stone on the counter. Instead of a quick no, there was movement — staff members summoned, the stone carried to a back room.

Minutes passed. She filled out a form about where she had found it.

She texted her partner and his mother: “Guys. It happened. They are in the back running tests right now. The girl in the front said she’s not supposed to say but if they’ve been back there this long it is almost definitely a diamond.”

Eventually, they called her in: It was a white diamond, more than two carats.

Laura Stanley, a certified gemologist in Little Rock, said that Arkansas diamonds often bear a patina-like sheen from their long journey through volcanic pipes.

“This lady just nailed it,” Ms. Stanley said.

Ms. Fox asked for a moment alone to share the experience with her boyfriend, Trevor Ballou, 37, before continuing to answer more questions from the state park’s staff about the diamond.

In a quiet room, the relief and exhaustion hit her at once, she said. After days of heat, hard soil and the constant weight of possible failure, she let the moment wash over her. The ache in her muscles, the grit in her hands and the improbable reward glinting in the light.

She fell to a knee, her fist pressed into the ground, tears running down her face.

“I crumbled,” Ms. Fox said. “My head was bent to the ground and my eyes were wet, and I’m just like: Oh my god. That was an impossible thing, and I did it and I am proud of that.”

Carrying the diamond in a small box nestled in a fanny pack strapped across her chest, Ms. Fox flew home from Arkansas with a sense of triumph the next day.

Back in New York, at their apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, her boyfriend was waiting with her favorite French fries from Bubby’s, a popular home-style American eatery.

“I hunted this for you,” she said, and then presented him with a box containing the diamond.

Now the ball is in Mr. Ballou’s court. When is he going to propose, and what’s his plan?

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Ballou said: “I’ll say this, I certainly have to find a way to live up to this now. She’s dealt her cards and now it’s my turn to put together something impressive, and I’m really looking forward to that.”

Any diamond over two carats found at the Crater of Diamonds State Park gets a name.

This one is named the Fox-Ballou Diamond, after the couple’s last names.

Now, it just needs a ring.