French tourist’s 7.46 carat diamond find sparks rush in US park

Julien Navas from Paris made a valuable chance visit to the Crater of Diamonds State Park, and is now 7.46 carats richer. Photo / Arkansas State Parks

A tourist visiting the US has more than covered the cost of his holiday after discovering a 7.46 carat diamond in a national park.

Julien Navas from Paris said that the diamond find had been a fluke, and has now sparked a rush on the Arkansas park.

The tourist had been travelling the southern states to see the launch of the Vulcan Centaur Rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Carrying on the trip through Louisiana and Arkansas, he and a friend had been passing the Crater of Diamonds State Park on January 11 and were drawn in by the name. Although they did not expect to find any gems.

The geological site, which is managed by Arkansas State Parks, allows public fossicking and rents out basic diamond-hunting kits to tourists for around $13 a day. This turned out to be a very good investment for Navas.

“I got to the park around nine o’clock and started to dig,” he told the Park Service. “That is back-breaking work, so by the afternoon I was mainly looking on top of the ground for anything that stood out.”

The park’s assistant superintendent Waymon Cox said Navas and his friend had been lucky to have arrived following heavy rain, which washes away dirt and can reveal surface diamonds.

Navas and his friend brought their day’s discoveries to the information centre for testing, where they were told an unassuming brown rock was actually a brown diamond weighing 7.46 carats.

The "Carine Diamond" is a 7.46-carat gem found at Crater of Diamonds State Park on January 11. Photo / Arkansas State Parks

The round gumdrop-sized stone was actually a precious gem, that could be worth between $40,000 to $130,000 if cleaned.

“I am so happy. All I can think about is telling my fiancée what I found,” he told the park, saying that he had named the discovery after her.

Navas says that he intends to have the “Carine Diamond” cut in two and divided between his fiancée and daughter, who were back in Paris.

The Carine diamond was the largest found since 2020, when the 9.07-carat Kinard Friendship Diamond was discovered on a public holiday.

The park said that although diamonds of this size are rare, they are regularly found by visitors.

There have been 11 stones found so far in 2024 and there is always a rush on the fossicking sites after a large discovery such as this.