A California woman discovered a 4.38 carat yellow diamond in Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park in September, the state parks department said.
Noreen Wredberg, of Granite Bay, California, was visiting Arkansas’ Hot Springs National Park with her husband, Michael, when she decided to stop by Crater of Diamonds.
“I first saw the park featured on a TV show several years ago,†Wredberg told the parks department. “When I realized we weren’t too far away, I knew we had to come!â€
She and her husband went to the park on Sept, 23, a few days after an inch of rain fell on the park, making for perfect diamond hunting conditions.
“The soil had dried a little, and the sun was out when Mrs. Wredberg visited two days later. She was in just the right place to see her diamond sparkle in the morning sunlight,†park interpreter Waymon Cox said in a release.
Wredberg had only been searching for about an hour when she spotted the massive gem.
“I didn’t know it was a diamond then, but it was clean and shiny, so I picked it up!†she said.
Arkansas is the only state with a public diamond mine. When visitors find a diamond, they bring it to the park’s Diamond Discovery Center, which confirmed that Wredberg’s jelly-bean size rock was indeed a diamond. The park said it is the largest diamond found in the park in the past year.
Wredberg gets to keep her gem, and isn’t sure what she will do with it yet.
More than 75,000 diamonds have been discovered at the Crater of Diamonds since 1906.
