Keshia Smith was on her second day digging through the dirt at an Arkansas state park when she spotted something flashing in the mud.
“I plucked it out and looked at it,” Smith said. “I thought nothing of it.”
She, her boyfriend and her brother were visiting Crater of Diamonds State Park on April 22, part of a roughly 1,100-mile road trip from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They had come, like thousands of others each year, hoping to find an uncut diamond they could keep.
“Everybody was excited. We were planning and prepping and getting different materials ready to go,” said Smith, 47.
The first day yielded nothing. So when Smith noticed a small, shiny stone the next morning, she assumed it was probably just a regular rock. She dropped it into a paper bag and kept digging around the open field, where hundreds of visitors were scattered across the 37-acre site, sifting through volcanic soil looking for precious gems.
About an hour later, she brought the stone to the park’s identification table, where staff examine visitors’ finds on-site. A manager weighed the stone and inspected it under a microscope.
Sarah Bivens, a park interpreter, told Smith she had found a 3.09-carat white diamond. Bivens gave her a certification card with the diamond’s weight and color.
Smith was in disbelief.
“I’m getting goose bumps just talking about it,” she said. “It was crazy.”
According to Bivens, one to two diamonds are found per day at the park, though they average around a quarter-carat. Stones larger than two carats are rare, with only a handful found each year. Smith’s 3.09-carat diamond was the second largest found at the park this year, behind a 6-carat yellow diamond.
“It’s fairly unusual,” Bivens said.
The park, located in Murfreesboro, draws about 100,000 visitors annually. In peak spring months, there are typically between 500 and 2,000 people there every day. Entry costs $15.
A volcanic eruption approximately 100 million years ago left the region scattered with diamonds and other minerals.
While some people surface search, others dig deep. Visitors either bring or rent equipment, including shovels, buckets, wagons, kneeling pads and wire mesh screens. They often wash soil with water to separate heavier stones from lighter sediment.
“More often than not, people come out here for a reason,” Bivens said. “They want to do something new or they need something uplifting.”
For Smith, the trip was about both.
In October, her 22-year-old son, Dashawn, died. A week before she was set to leave for Arkansas, Smith’s father died of liver cancer while in hospice care.
“It was a lot,” Smith said.
She considered canceling the trip but decided to go anyway. It had been planned for eight months, she said, and she needed the distraction.
“I wasn’t thinking I was really going to find something, I just wanted the adventure of digging through dirt,” she said.
The morning she found the diamond, as she scanned around the field, she saw a TikTok creator she had been following in preparation for the trip, known as “Adventure Jack.” He documents his searches at the park and was the finder of the 6-carat yellow diamond earlier this year.
Seeing him there, she said, felt surreal.
“I couldn’t believe I met him,” Smith said.
Before bringing her stone to be examined by park staff, Smith showed it to him. She said his eyes lit up and his face flushed.
“Man, when I saw his face, I just immediately started crying,” she said.
Smith said she noticed the diamond formed a subtle heart shape — a sign, she believes, from her father and son.
“I was under a lot of pressure. … Pressure makes diamonds,” Smith said, adding that she was wearing her son’s T-shirt the day she found the diamond. “I felt like they sent me there and I was supposed to get that. I had my two angels right there with me.”
Smith named the diamond Za’Novia Liberty Diamond, combining the names of her son’s two children, and “liberty” for her personal freedom, she said, and the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States.
“I’m still up on a cloud,” she said.
Smith said for the first time in a long time, the discovery brought her a sense of peace.
“I just felt free from all the things I was going through,” she said. “It was a little bit of relief.”
She had the diamond examined by a jeweler, she said, though it couldn’t be appraised there in its raw form. The value of the stone would be based on its quality, and she said she hopes to have it evaluated by a gemologist.
Smith plans to return to the park later this year. She also brought home two buckets of gravel — each visitor is allowed one per day — and will sift through them soon.
“I’m hoping my second one is in there,” she said.
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