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Untitled Document
My Bucket List Dives
Bonne Terre Mines, Mo
by Pete "NetDoc" Murray
My bucket list for diving contains a lot of the usual places: Fiji, the Great Barrier Reef and Bermuda to name a few. All of these, as most of my favorite dive sites are in warm tropical climates! So, I must admit that I was less than excited when I was invited by Doug and Catherine Goergens to come visit Bonne Terre Mines just outside of St Louis Missouri. After all, 60 degree water is about fifteen degrees colder than my Florida Springs and that required some mental and gear preparations on my part.
So, with much trepidation, I accepted the offer by Doug and Catherine to come and visit the Bonne Terre Mines and their yearly Treasure Hunt. Wow, was that ever a great decision on my part on so many levels. I got to try out my new Fusion Dry Suit from White's and I got to dive in a very unique environment with a very dedicated and first rate dive team.
First let's get some history about the mine. The mine first started as an eight foot trench in 1860 by Jean Pratte looking to find lead. It seems that the Civil War had created a huge demand for lead and this area had rich deposits close to the surface. The land was bought by the St Joseph Lead Co, which brought in their diamond tipped drill. In no time at all, the hole grew and got much deeper and the mine started to sprawl. The mine was hyperactive for a century with as many as 5500 workers and producing almost 3,000 tons of ore a day. This was the world's largest lead mine for quite some time and they operated it 24/7. They even created a troglodyte city they called Moon Town, which contained a machine shop, barracks, a stable and even a small laboratory. Men worked for weeks in the darkness and the mules lived their entire lives down there. The only things allowed out of the mine were miners and lead.
By 1960s the demand for lead had declined and lead was becoming undesirable in things like gas and paint. So one day they simply turned off the lights, the pumps and closed the mine. No one was allowed in and everything was left right where the workers last put them and the mine slowly filled with water. In 1979, Doug and Cathy Goergens bought the mine and a number of buildings in the area. Bonne Terre (the town) had fallen on hard times with the closing of the mine. The tax base had collapsed and things were looking very run down. The Goergens changed that by adding tourism as the new product for the town. They have done a remarkable job of salvaging and preserving a lot of the history and their Depot Bed and Breakfast with rail car suites, is way cool!
The end result is a 400 foot deep lake, with 17 miles of shore line 150 feet below the surface of the earth! The water is the deepest blue and the mine is a honeycomb of varying depths, shafts, undercuts, caverns and even caves. No, you don't have to be cave certified to dive here. Remember: it's an underground lake! No, you don't have to worry about lead poisoning here either: natural lead is trapped in galena and has to be smelt out. Numerous and ongoing water tests show absolutely no presence of free lead in the water! You don't even have to dive to have fun here. They have tours for the non-divers in the dry tunnels while the divers in your party tour below the surface. No need for this to be an exclusive trip for just the divers.
When you approach the "Company Store", you will see a list of how many people have been lost in the mine. Don't worry as it's a spoof. Their safety record for divers is more than excellent and safety is what the owners and the staff of Bonne Terre Mines is all about. It starts with check in. You have to provide a c-card of course as well as read, understand and sign the usual waivers. Then you get to see a video about what is acceptable and not acceptable in the mine. Stop here, by the way and visit the rest room. You wont find facilities in the mine! You take a few deeps breaths and pick up your gear (except for tanks) and head out into the bright Missouri sunshine. It really doesn't matter what the weather is topside though. The air below ground is a constant 63 F year round and the water stays right at 56 F.
Now, here is where the fun began for me. You see, I love artifacts. I love to see man's handicraft and how he solved problems before we got so smart! As you walk into the Mule entrance (you do have your gear, don't you?), you are surrounded by lots of the artifacts retrieved from the mine. Shovels, picks, carbide head lights, and you name it. If it had to do with mining you are going to get to see it. My mind tried to envision the early miners, who without the aid of electric lights carved this shaft out of the hard rock with blood, sweat, tears and a little judicious use of dynamite. It slowly dawned on me that I was walking in one huge artifact. My guide, Doug Goergens, started pointing out all of the interesting things to see. The colors were20amazing as you can see the presence of so many different ores. It was a fair walk to the dock, but I hardly noticed what I was carrying as I tried to take it all in.
Now the dock has been set up for diving. There are benches at just the right height to set up your gear and don it with ease. Tanks are already down there and so is a filling station. Just ask for NitrOx or air and you can get what you need. The guides have a small spot on the dock all to their own, and their laughter and conversation is infectious. Just before we got to the dock, we passed their dressing room... sort of the current rendition of Moon Town. I set up my gear: White's Fusion Dry Suit, Kydex backplate and travel wing from Deep Sea Supply, My Atomic regulator with the Oceanic Veo 250 PDC, a very generic mask, my Jet fins and all the accoutrements that being a cavern diver entails. I was loaned an HID for our dive. They ask that you leave yours behind for the trip as they have enough and too many lights destroys their ability to signal efficiently. I meet Bear for the first time and confide with him that I need just a few moments as I have not dove a dry suit for several years and I wanted to adjust first.
Happy with my trim and buoyancy, I signal for the tour to proceed. While my gear and skills were more than ready for this kind of diving , my mind was about to be blown. I should add here the safety precautions that they have taken to make this as safe as possible. Every group has at least two guides. If there are more than 8 you get three guides and a then they add a kayak as surface support. If something goes wrong with your gear or you simply get the heebie jeebies, you always have a direct ascent to the surface and a smiling staffer to assist you back to the dock. It's wonderful.
Under water, the first thing to hit me was 100+ft visibility and the effects of the artificial light from the surface. The blues were just so different here ranging from a light pastel to deep indigo. The pillars which are made up of stone not mined, create eerie silhouettes and cast shadows that play with your eyes. It's beyond surreal at this point, and you begin to wonder if MC Escher had a hand in creating this scene scape. We do a bubble and a light check and surface... Bear wants to conserve our air so we do an easy surface swim. No waves or appreciable current make time of the surface relaxing. Just a giant water bed!
Now, I had already taken the boat tour earlier, but it's still neat to see the scaffolding that goes all the way to the ceiling. I highly recommend the boat tour. It greatly enhanses the underwater experience. There are a number of staff with us and each one points their favorite feature on our surface swim. Again, I am overwhelmed with the history and the humanity that created this place! Soon we are near the main elevator shaft. The signal is made to descend and we drop beneath the waveless lake. It's darker here and our lights pierce the gloom. We descend to about 80 feet and I see a conglomeration of wheels or gears. I move my head from side to side trying to get a perspective, and then I realize that it's a steam engine lying on it's side! It's a first for me there and I follow my guide as we twist around all sorts of man made structures, over train tracks and past the tools and implements which are still lying in the same place when they turned off the lights in the sixties.
The dive lasts an hour and I walk up the steps (no ladder exit- yay!) still in complete bewilderment. I saw enough for a dozen dives and it was tough for me to process it all. On subsequent dives I got to take a “normal” tour as well as get to see some mind bending scenes. Among these are the Smoke room, where the oh so gentle current is caressing a rusting pipe and the rust being carried off looks just like smoke from a chimney. Truly impressive. I got to see several instances of five rows of five dots. This is where the miners of yore would keep their tally of work accomplished. They had to produce 25 carts of ore daily, and so would take a moment to burn a spot for each one with their carbide lantern. One miner even signed his work, leaving his20name burned into the side of the mine for posterity. I saw debris from dynamite crates as well as helmets and even a light bulb caught under an overhang. I could fill several pages with all the cools scenes, but I have a far better idea: GO SEE IT FOR YOURSELF.
Make no mistake about it, if Bonne Terre Mine is not already on your bucket list of dive sites, it should be. This is about as unique as it gets and it seems that everyone sees the mine a bit differently than the next person. You don't need anything more than a c-card and their staff will make sure that you have the time of your life becoming a deep earth explorer. The staff is courteous and professional and will always put your comfort ahead of their own. Make no doubt about it, the staff is excited about each and every time they get to lead a tour. Each one has been checked out and tested so that management knows that they won't get lost!
For you instructors and dive shop owners, Bonne Terre Mine is the PERFECT place to bring your students, year round. You can conduct training from Open Water to Tec training. You'll have your own training room, a completely controlled diving environment including the "shallows" with over 100 ft visibility a short surface swim from the dock. The shallows have a 25 ft. flat rock silt-free floor with several acres to swim your students around in. No currents, weather problems and no more muddy, zero vis platforms. With ownership and staff, the Mine is a mixture of love for diving and a sincere dedication to showing off their play ground with some new friends. I hope that includes you!
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