Pea-size white diamond found in Arkansas park. ‘The minute I saw it... I knew’

Having already created memories at Crater of Diamonds State Park with his wife, Dewy White returned to the Arkansas tourist destination hoping for a shiny prize.

This time, he didn’t leave empty handed.

“Thank you, Jesus!” Dewy White said when he spotted the “glimmering gem” in his shovel during an Oct. 2 outing at the state park, where visitors get to hunt for diamonds throughout the 37.5-acre search area.

White, of Paoli, Indiana, made the discovery in the Canary Hill area of the Murfreesboro park. It’s a spot he was referred to on his first day there.

He had been dry sifting throughout the day and found plenty of quartz and calcite. Then, he spotted a diamond unlike one he had ever seen before.

“The minute I saw it in my shovel, I knew,” the man said of the pea-sized gem.

It was a 2.71-carat white diamond and the fourth largest diamond discovered at the park this year, officials said in an Oct. 6 news release.

“It looked like a metal piece of glass,” White said.

Officials said White “expressed his gratitude to the kind people” he met as he searched and wished he could thank the man who led him to his discovery site.

The diamond is now White’s, as visitors are allowed to keep what they find at the park. More than 400 diamonds have been registered this year at the park, officials said.

“White chose to name his diamond the Hope Diamond, simply because he had hoped they would find one,” according to the news release.

Murfreesboro is about a 110-mile drive southwest from Little Rock.