Sometimes, a vacationing tip pays off in a big way. Josh Lanik, a 36-year-old schoolteacher from Hebron, Nebraska, recently visited Crater of Diamonds State Park on a family vacation. After spending about two hours searching for diamonds on July 24, Lanik left with a brandy-colored gem weighing just over two carats.
According to Lanik, he was searching near the southwest edge of the park's 37.5-acre diamond search area when he picked up the diamond. "We took the kids to look for amethyst on Canary Hill, and I was walking through an area where it looked like a lot of water had washed when I saw it." Lanik found his diamond about 15 feet from the West Drain, a trench that runs along the western border of the park's diamond search area.
At first, Lanik said he wasn't sure of what he had found, but he knew it was something unique. "It was blatantly obvious there was something different about it. I saw the shine, and when I picked it up and rolled it in my hand, I noticed there weren't any sharp edges." Lanik showed the gem to his wife, who was searching nearby, and dropped it into a brown paper sack with several other rocks and minerals.
After identifying and weighing the gem, park staff brought Lanik into the office and informed him that he had discovered the largest diamond found so far in 2019.
Park Interpreter Waymon Cox noted that "Mr. Lanik's gem is about the size of a jellybean and has a dark brown color, similar to brandy. It has a beautiful natural pear shape and smooth, curved facets that give the gem a metallic shine."
In total, over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed at the Crater of Diamonds since the first diamonds were discovered in 1906 by John Huddleston, a farmer who owned the land long before it became an Arkansas State Park in 1972.