--- title: Colorado Woman Finds 8.52 Carat Diamond in State Park description: A Colorado woman found a 8.52 carat diamond at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. canonical: https://time.com/3938915/colorado-woman-finds-diamond/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-27T12:30:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:48:22.441Z og:title: Colorado Woman Finds 8.52 Carat Diamond in State Park og:description: She's calling it the "Esperanza Diamond" og:url: https://time.com/3938915/colorado-woman-finds-diamond/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8315dbadfe68a6d4/698858c15f570f0322b1c387/8-52-caratdiamondandarkansasquarter.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2800 og:image:height: 1575 og:image:alt: 8.52-carat diamond Arkansas quarter og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Colorado Woman Finds 8.52 Carat Diamond in State Park twitter:description: She's calling it the "Esperanza Diamond" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8315dbadfe68a6d4/698858c15f570f0322b1c387/8-52-caratdiamondandarkansasquarter.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Colorado Woman Finds 8.52 Carat Diamond in State Park > Sponsored content. 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The State Parks of Arkansas by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Jun 27, 2015 12:30 PM UTC A very lucky Colorado woman found an 8.52 carat diamond this week at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. Bobbie Oskarson of Longmont, Colo. discovered the diamond after only 20 minutes of searching. According to the park, it’s the fifth largest diamond discovered by a visitor since the state park was established in 1972. The diamond is about three-quarters of an inch long and is as wide as a No. 2 pencil. Oskarson is calling her find the Esperanza Diamond, which is her niece’s name as well “hope” in Spanish. She found the diamond in an area of the park called the Pig Pen, because it’s one of the muddiest spots. She currently plans to keep it. “Ms. Oskarson’s eight-and-a-half-carat diamond is absolutely stunning, sparkling with a metallic shine, and appears to be an unbroken, capsule-shaped crystal. It features smooth, curved facets, a characteristic shared by all unbroken diamonds from the Crater of Diamonds,” said Park Interpreter Waymon Cox [in a statement](http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/news/display.aspx?id=2498). ## Transcript >> My name is Scott Warner, born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I've been prospecting for gold for about 30 years. Once I found my first gold nugget, that was it. I've been hunting ever since. Man, there's lots of gold out here. There are big nuggets out here. >> I'm Guy Nesbitt, Southern California prospecting. >> We're headed down to Gold Gulch. It's a wash bed that we're gonna dig up up to the narrows where the Canyons are exposing a lot of bedrock, a lot of contact points, courts, so we're gonna take a trip up here and see some nice country and give this area a little test. We're here. >> Maybe it's gold or God will give up to me today. >> We're in Gold Gulch, which basically is a riverbed. This is one of our spots. This is secret spot number two that we wanna dig. If you look back in this corner right here, there's a bunch of big boulders piled in this corner. We've also done some dowsing, which indicates there are some big gold back in here. >> Hey, do me a favor. Get your dowsers out. Gold has its own wave, radiowave, that it responds to. Every metal does. Silver has its own radiowave. Gold has a radiowave. And so, what this does is it puts off a signal that picks up the radiowaves from the gold. And when you cross the path of the gold, you'll get a dowsing indication. Your rods will cross. The rods will cross, right, when you hit that line and that means you're in a line where there's some gold. >> Gold is on the same frequency these rods are. When you're dowsing, you think gold. You don't think about anything to do at home. You just focus on gold like a chalkboard. See the word " gold" on it a hundred times. You focus on that. Some people can do dowsing. Some people can't. Okay. Right here, I'm getting a target. >> Okay. Now, they're crossing and they're level. There's no droppage in these and here's another target. Eventually, we may take this on as a project with four or five guys that'd come up with our wenches and pull these boulders and dig this out and get the gold out. And we'll probably be rewarded with some big gold 'cause I believe there's some big nuggets in here. We send up a lot of dry washers out here. This basically is processing material dry and it kinda shakes and vibrates and it's got a blower to it. It separates out the light material from the heavies. We get a lot of people now joining our clubs and buying equipment. And at the gold shows, we're seeing a lot of new people coming in. A lot of interest in it just because of the price. And with the economy being weak the way it is, when it gets worse, gold goes up and becomes valuable. And right now, it's at the highest amount it's ever been and sparking a lot of interest in gold mining. >> Well, we came from Utah to do a little bit of gold prospecting. This is our second year into it and this is our big outing with the GPAA and just had a great time. Found a little bit of gold and show them the gold, Joe. >> We got this [ unk ]. >> They said maybe we've got a couple of grains. >> Yeah. Maybe. >> That's about it. >> Which how much is that worth do you think money wise? >> Oh, they said maybe $ 20. >> Yeah. >> We need to find a whole lot more. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3938915/colorado-woman-finds-diamond/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3938915/colorado-woman-finds-diamond/"},"headline":"Colorado Woman Finds 8.52 Carat Diamond in State Park","datePublished":"2015-06-27T12:30:27.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:48:22.441Z","description":"She's calling it the \"Esperanza Diamond\"","url":"https://time.com/3938915/colorado-woman-finds-diamond/","keywords":["Newsfeed","U.S.","Arkansas","People","Diamond"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8315dbadfe68a6d4/698858c15f570f0322b1c387/8-52-caratdiamondandarkansasquarter.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8315dbadfe68a6d4/698858c15f570f0322b1c387/8-52-caratdiamondandarkansasquarter.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"8.52-carat diamond Arkansas quarter","caption":"8.52-carat diamond Arkansas quarter","creditText":"The State Parks of Arkansas","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3938915/colorado-woman-finds-diamond/","name":"Colorado Woman Finds 8.52 Carat Diamond in State Park"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Dowsing for Nuggets in a New Gold Rush","description":"As gold prices rise, prospectors dig again in California's old Gold Rush territory. 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