State park visits really treasured

The bling keeps popping up at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Pike County.

Two big ol’ diamonds — one weighing 6.39 carats and one weighing 2.73 carats — were recently unearthed at the park.

The largest was discovered in mid-June by Dr. Mindy Pomtree of Benton, who took a break from using the wet-sifting method of diamond hunting and was walking around when she spied something shiny on the ground.

“She walked over near an area where they were wet sifting called Beatty’s Hill,” says park interpreter Waymon Cox. (Pomtree declined to be interviewed, Cox told us.) “She saw something out of the corner of her eye and reached down and picked it up. She said she thought it looked cool and that it was definitely shiny, but didn’t know at that time that it was a diamond.”

Pomtree pocketed the pretty rock, which was about the size of a pumpkin seed, and continued searching. After returning home, she took it to a jeweler and learned that the sparkling stone was a white diamond.

She returned to the park earlier this month to have it weighed and registered.

“It’s the 12th-largest diamond found here since 1972 [when the park opened],” Cox says. “And it’s the fifth-largest white diamond found here since 1972. It’s pretty high up on the list.”

Finders get to name their diamonds, and Pomtree called hers Serendipity.

David Dempsey of Athens, Ala., first heard about the park as an elementary student but had never visited.

When an Arizona trip was canceled because of the pandemic, he and his wife, Jessica, decided to come hunt for diamonds with their four children. They were on their third day of searching when he uncovered his stone on July 9.

“We got there at 8 [a.m.] and started digging in the east drain,” says Dempsey, 36. “We didn’t find anything in the morning, but we said let’s give it another shot.”

Dempsey was wet sifting with his youngest daughter, Emaris, 4, when he saw the gem.

“It was like everything melted off of it because nothing sticks to diamonds,” he says. “My vision went blurry and my first thought was that someone was messing with me.”

His stepson, 13-year-old Drake Ducharme, had come to tell him lunch was ready.

“I told him, ‘Dude, we have a diamond,’” Dempsey says. “He was speechless.”

Theirs is a blended family, so Dempsey named it the Dempsey-Ducharme Diamond.

“It was definitely a family find,” he says. “Who knows whose shovel dug it up?”

Their diamond is being evaluated by Underwoods Fine Jewelers in Fayetteville.

“We’re open to selling it, but it all depends on the numbers and its estimated value,” he says.

After having such good luck on their first trip, he says the family plans to return.

“We want to come back at least two or three times a year,” he says.