Coming up!
The Blue World team travels to land-locked Missouri to dive inside a spooky abandoned
lead mine!
Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
Bonne Terre, Missouri: a working-class town in middle America, and not the first place
you would think of for scuba diving.
But hidden beneath the landscape lies an incredible marvel of human engineering.
The Blue World team has come to Bonne Terre Mine, about an hour south of St. Louis, where
lead was mined from the Earth for a hundred years.
Construction of Bonne Terre Mine began in 1864.
Over the next hundred years, the mine grew to ten acres spread beneath the town, until
it was finally closed in 1962.
At the time, it was claimed to be the largest man-made cavern in the world.
Since work stopped, it has slowly filled with groundwater, making it a world-class dive
destination.
Cameraman Todd, Mike Young and I arrive to meet our guides Steve, Matt and Rob.
Hey you guys!
We made it.
Welcome Nice to meet you I’m Jonathan
I’m Matt…
Todd…
Nice to meet you Matt Rob, Steve…
Tell me, what are we going to do today?
We are going to go explore an old abandoned lead mine from under the water.
So we’re going to get your dive gear together and we going to go enter through the mule
entrance right there and take a hike down to the water get this on the way.
Alright!
The mule entrance?
Do we have mules to carry the gear?
We have one.
We have one mule right here!
Of course.
Well let’s go!
Lead on!
We head on over to the Lounge to set up our gear.
Our team will be diving our KISS Sidewinder rebreathers for this adventure.
Alright lets go!
Where are we going?
We make our way to the mule entrance, where we finally get to see the mine!
There’s a museum’s-worth of artifacts to see right in the entrance.
Inside the double doors it goes from freezing cold winter to warm and steamy!
And then it’s down 68 step into the mine itself.
When the rock was mined away, the miners left supporting pillars, so the ceiling wouldn’t
collapse.
Impressive engineering.
I feel like I’m exploring an enormous cave, but our hosts remind us that everything we
see was created by hand.
About a thousand feet from the entrance, we reach the Billion Gallon Lake.
We don’t know if it actually has a billion gallons, but that’s what they call it!
And floating on that lake is an epic diving dock!
Assisting us on this shoot is legendary cave diver Mike Young who designed the rebreathers
we’re using.
The shallows is about 25 feet deep…
Before the dive, a briefing from Steve Tisinai who has been guiding dives here for several
years.
…back over here, and we are going to see another ore cart.
And next to that ore cart is one of the ways that they moved ore down from one level to
the next.
The water temperature in the mine remains in the mid-50s all year around.
Considering how cold it is outside, that seems pretty mild, but it’s still drysuit temperature.
There is a nice swim step for donning the gear.
The place is really built for diver convenience.
Soon, we’re on our way.
Underwater, we immediately start seeing all the things that were abandoned when mining
ceased, such as a jackhammer still plunged into the rock.
Although we pass through several overhead-environment passages, most of the diving in the mine has
air above it, so you can surface if you need to, making it accessible for open water divers.
We find some bent ore cart rails stashed in a pile.
And nearby, some sketchy looking ladders.
In the next mineshaft, we have to squeeze around an ore cart, still parked right where
it was left.
Then the mine opens up into a huge chamber with air above it.
I’m already lost, but Steve and Rob know exactly where they are.
Because the place is so huge, all the diving is done with experienced guides.
Some of this stuff, we have no idea what it is.
Steve demonstrates the proper use of the pickaxe.
Mike gives it a go.
The water is so still that not only can iron form “rustcicles”, but we find strange
chemical trails in the water created by oxidation of the metal.
Because there is absolutely no water movement to carry it away, it just kind of hangs in
the water like smoke.
In the rock, we see drill holes left over from blasting with dynamite.
As we continue on, we pass through what looks like clouds, all formed from the metal oxidation
smoke.
Steve points out a large deposit of quartz, which shimmers in our lights.
I find a section of dripstone like you would see in a cave.
Given that the mine was only operating for a hundred years and this formation can’t
form underwater, I’m surprised to see how fast dripstone can actually be created.
Dropping deeper, we head into another cave-like mine shaft.
It emerges into a huge room with an elevator shaft that goes from the surface way down
to 230 feet deep, which is 350 feet from the daylight.
It was used to transport workers to and from the deepest levels of the mine.
It’s covered in rustcicles like the Titanic.
We pass through a layer of metal smoke that feels like the rings of Saturn.
The water is so still in here that these clouds just don’t move.
It’s like time is frozen.
Passing into a deeper section of the mine, we find cave lines.
They are here because this part is an overhead environment with no air above us, so we are
effectively cave diving.
We’re on the 3rd level in about 90 feet of water, and we reach the same elevator.
At this point we are more than 200 feet below ground level.
I stick my head into the elevator to check it out.
It’s a spooky abyss.
We pass over a workbench still cluttered with tools and equipment.
On the metal nearby we find formations that almost look like sponges.
These are iron-eating bacteria colonies that thrive in low oxygen environments.
Steve passes by a steel door, showing how delicate the bacteria colonies are.
It looks like orange cotton candy.
We investigate a concrete block building that was one of six constructed down here for offices,
storage and maintenance.
The bacteria colonies are so fragile that they’re impossible not to disturb.
Soon we are swimming in rusty cotton candy.
Everywhere I look are the deteriorating remnants of daily life in a mine.
A metal shed looks like it’s completely constructed of cotton candy.
Our decompression is adding up, and it’s time to start heading back.
Back at the dock, we meet Bonnie, a smallmouth bass that somehow got in here.
The staff feeds her so she doesn’t starve in these nutrient-poor waters.
She is the only fish we see.
Wow!
I have to say, in all the years I’ve been diving, I’ve never seen a place quite like
that!
It’s spooky!
It’s spooky.
It’s weird.
It’s cool.
Crazy cool.
And the layers in the water!
Very weird!
Yeah!
Bonne Terre Mine is an anomaly--an incredible combination of open water and cave diving
with fascinating historical and scientific things to see, all located underground in
a small town in Missouri.
The water is the same temperature all the time and the conditions are extremely consistent.
Summer or winter, it’s a must-visit destination in the Blue World.
Hey you guys!
Check out that video!
It’s a really good one!
Also this one’s pretty good too!
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