Some people search for “the one” before they get married. For Micherre Fox, hers appeared at her feet – a glimmering diamond in the rough.
About two years ago, the 31-year-old New Yorker decided she wanted to find her own diamond for her engagement ring.
“I was willing to go anywhere in the world to make that happen,” Fox said, but her research pointed to a destination in the US: Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas.
After completing graduate school, and backed by a supportive partner who agreed to wait for the perfect stone, Fox told Arkansas State Parks, she set off on July 8 to try her hand at the only place in the world where the public can dig for – and keep – diamonds.
After three weeks of near-daily digging in the summer heat, the longshot quest paid off in dazzling fashion.
While walking across the park’s 37.5‑acre search field on the final day of her trip, Fox caught a flash of light at her feet. She brushed it off, thinking it was a dew-covered spiderweb, until she realized it was a shiny stone.
“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,” Fox said in a state parks statement.
Park staff confirmed the stone – about the size of a human canine tooth – was a white diamond, weighing 2.3 carats, making it the third‑largest found at the park so far this year.
“I dropped to my knees and cried, then started laughing,” Fox said in the statement. “I knew I’d found my forever stone,” she added.
She named it the “Fox‑Ballou Diamond,” a sentimental nod to her and her partner’s last names.
While finding the stone was a daunting effort, Fox said it was an invaluable journey.
“There’s something symbolic about being able to solve problems with money, but sometimes money runs out in a marriage,” Fox said in the statement. “You need to be willing and able to solve those problems with hard work,” she added.
The future bride also emphasized the hands-on nature of the experience. “After all the research, there’s luck and there’s hard work,” she told Arkansas State Parks.
“When you are literally picking up the dirt in your hands, no amount of research can do that for you; no amount of education can take you all the way,” she added.
Each year, Crater of Diamonds State Park draws hopeful prospectors to its volcanic soil – where the “finders, keepers” policy turns dreamers into diamond owners.
This year alone, at least 366 diamonds have been registered, with 11 weighing over one carat each. Since the first diamonds were discovered at the site in 1906, it has yielded more than 75,000 diamonds.
The park is where the largest diamond ever found in the US – the 40.23‑carat “Uncle Sam” diamond – was unearthed in 1924, before it was later placed in the National Museum of Natural History.
