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After three weeks, with bug bites and tattered hiking boots, Micherre Fox found the stone at Crater of Diamonds State Park.
By Mark Walker, New York Times Service
updated on August 15, 2025 | 2:23 PM
6 minutes to read
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Micherre Fox, who lives in Manhattan, holds a 2.3-carat uncut white diamond she dug up at Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park after three weeks of searching. Arkansas State Parks via The New York Times
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, Fox, who lives in New York City, 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, 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: 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 that 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.
Fox holds the 2.3 carat uncut white diamond she dug up at Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park. Arkansas State Parks via The New York Times
Each year, about 160,000 people, on average, come to Crater of Diamonds State Park, about a 110-mile drive southwest from Little Rock, in hopes of digging up a diamond they can keep.
Most days, diggers take their finds to the park’s experts to learn what they found.