Bonne Terre Mine

[javelindan]

Hi, all. Talking with Bill Hilton at ScubaDaddy's in Burnsville, he's looking to put together a dive trip this summer to Bonne Terre Mine located south of St. Louis. He gave me a brochure and a video to review... looks incredible!!
Bonne Terre is an old lead mine which closed in the early 1960's after being mined out. 34 miles of tunnels of which a good portion is under water (the underwater lake has 17mi of shoreline). A husband/wife dive shop team bought the place in the late 1970's and turned it into the largest inland dive resort in the world with over 15K divers visiting per year (including Jacques Cousteau for a week).
Steady 62F air temps year round, 58F water, 300K watts of lighting crystal clear water. The coolest thing is that when the mine was abandoned, most everything in the mine was simply left behind: mining structures, equipment, etc. and it's all perfectly preserved in the cool, fresh water.

Here's an interesting site which profiles the mine as well as 11 other unique dives in the US: