Arizona father and son finds 2 carat diamond while digging at Arkansas state park

AZ father and son make big diamond find

What began as a road trip ended up with the Arizona father-and-son team finding an uncut diamond at a state park in Arkansas where people can look for the precious mineral. FOX 10's Steve Nielsen reports.

PHOENIX - It began with a road trip between an Arizona father and his son, and it ended with the two coming back home with a two-carat diamond.

Marshall and his father, Will Barnett, went to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. It's a unique place where anyone can go and dig for diamonds. Per the park's website, it is one of the only diamond-producing sites in the world where members of the public can search for diamonds in their original volcanic source. Will has a connection to Arkansas: he grew up out there, and his uncle was an employee with Arkansas State Park.

"I scraped my bucket off the top, and Marshall is digging for China, man," said Will. "He's going as deep as he can, so we carried both of our buckets up to the wash center."

The two love sifting dirt for treasure, but this time, the dirt seemed different.

"Flip it over and look for maybe 10 seconds, and I go ‘hey Marshall, you should come take a look. There might be a diamond in this screen,’" Will recounted. "Not sure, but it looked different than anything we'd seen."

The two later took a shiny rock up to the diamond identification center.

"They finally call us back, and the park superintendent let us know it was a 2.03 carat Arkansas diamond. Second largest diamond in the park that year," Will said. "We're talking, like, 0.0002% chance of finding one that big, so we definitely played the lottery on the way home that day too!"

For Will and his son, the trip was a bonding experience that is as rare as the diamond they found.

"There's beauty to be found, as long as you're open-minded enough to find it,": Will said. He also stressed that people don't have to drive to Arkansas to find treasure, as they can also be found in the Grand Canyon State.

As for the park itself, their website notes a rather special connection it has to Arizona: the first person to buy a ticket at the then-newly-opened Visitor Information Center on June 2, 1979 was a Black Canyon City man named James Williamson. Williamson also found a 5.08 carat brown diamond, and became the first person to register a find at the facility.