Man Goes on 2000-Mile Quest to Mine His Own Diamonds for Engagement Ring—and Finds a 2.2 Carat Beauty

For years, this 26-year-old had dreamed of finding his own precious gems to create a special engagement ring for his future wife, something unique.

After a co-worker told him that he could actually mine diamonds in an Arkansas state park, he devised a plan to take a cross-country road trip to Crater of Diamonds State Park.

Christian Liden even made some mining tools to get on the journey and watched many YouTube videos on finding gemstones in the park, secretly doing everything so his girlfriend wouldn’t find out.

Accompanied by an old friend, he left Poulsbo, Washington, on May 1. Along the way they tested their equipment in a Montana sapphire mine, before reaching the Arkansas diamond site six days later.

On his third day of full-time mining in the 37-acre diamond hunting area at Crater of Diamonds, Liden was doing a wet screening when he spotted it.

He immediately knew that it was the award he had traveled more than 2,000 miles for: the gemstone to adorn the engagement ring he would give his girlfriend, Desirae, after two years of dating.

“I saw it sparkle as soon as I turned the screen over and immediately knew it was a diamond. I was shaking so much that I asked my friend to pull it out of the gravel for me! “

Liden placed the gem in a plastic bag and took it to the park’s Diamond Discovery Center, where staff confirmed that he had found a large yellow diamond.

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Weighing 2.20 carats, the Liden diamond is the largest found in the park since last October, when a visitor to Fayetteville discovered a 4.49-carat yellow diamond.

According to Assistant Superintendent Dru Edmonds, “Mr. The Liden diamond is light yellow in color, with a triangular shape and a brilliant metallic luster. Like most diamonds in the park, it contains some inclusions, which makes it unique. “

“As beautiful as this diamond is, I think the best part is the story behind it,” Edmonds continued. “Since the eighth grade, Mr. Liden has dreamed of creating a special ring for his future wife, out of stones and gold that he mined himself. And now he can make that dream come true. “

Liden told the staff that he had already successfully mined enough gold to have a sufficient quantity for the ring band, and now his search was complete.

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“I was only hoping to find a couple of smaller stones and had planned to buy a center stone later, but now it won’t be needed!”

Liden plans to mine opals in Nevada before returning home and wants to design an engagement ring together with his future wife using all the gemstones collected on his cross-country mining quest.

Diggers for large crater diamonds often choose to name their gems. Liden appointed his Washington Sunshine, “Because it has a nice light yellow color, like the sunlight in Washington.”

Edmonds says that park visitors find an average of one to two diamonds every day. In all, more than 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed in Diamond Crater since the first gemstones were discovered in 1906 by John Huddleston, a farmer who owned the land long before it became an Arkansas State Park in 1972.

The largest diamond ever found in the US It was unearthed here in 1924 during an early mining operation. Named the Uncle Sam, the white diamond with a pink plaster weighed over 40 carats and was purchased by a private collector for $ 150,000 in 1971. Another well-known diamond, found by a local Murfreesboro resident in 1990, is on display in the park’s visitor center. : a 3.03 – carat white gem rated ideal cut, D-colorless and flawless.

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Diamonds come in all the colors of the rainbow, but the three most common colors at the crater site are white, brown, and yellow, in that order.

Last year, before the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, the second largest brown diamond ever found was discovered in the Arkansas park, weighing more than 9 carats. Entry to the park’s diamond search area is currently limited to 1,500 tickets per day, with many being sold online at CraterofDiamondsStatePark.com.

THIS is a proven gem to share on social media to tell friends about the park …