A dad and his family made the find of a lifetime on December 30 during a visit to a special park in Arkansas.
When James Ward of Cypress, Texas, his wife, Elizabeth, and their sons, nine-year-old Adrian, and seven-year-old Austin, decided to visit Crater of Diamonds State Park, they were looking for a mining adventure, the Arkansas State Parks website recently announced.
They arrived on December 29 and spent several hours searching, but cold weather conditions made them consider whether or not it was time to go home.
Elizabeth recalled, “We were so cold! We were here for, like, four hours. It was freezing, but Adrian was the one who wanted to come back.”
When they returned the following day and searched for a couple more hours, something caught Ward’s eye.
“I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was different than everything else I had found,” he stated, noting they put it inside a paper sack with their other treasures. However, when it was time to leave staffers at the park told him it was a 2.09-carat diamond and the family could not believe it.
The state park said it was one of the biggest finds in 2025:
Video footage from 2024 shows people looking for diamonds at the park in the unique soil, per THV 11. A park ranger said people in the early 1900s speculated there could be diamonds in that area, and they were right:
The Ward family has since dubbed the tiny treasure the Ward Diamond, but they are still deciding whether or not to sell or keep it until they figure out how much it is worth.
An image shows Ward holding the small find that could be worth a good amount of money:
In advice to others, he said, “You can stumble upon a diamond in any place or time. Don’t give up on the first day!”
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