The newest dive site in the United States holds the kind of amenities sure to beckon divers: an old F-5 Navy jet, antique fire trucks, an old passenger bus, dive platforms, training pool, and an on-site dive shop, just to name a few. Still missing at this stop south of Houston in Clute, Texas, however, is the most critical component of any good dive site: water. Well, at least enough of it, anyway.
The pumps that once directed water out of the sand pit have been turned off, and groundwater is seeping above the surface and forming what is envisioned as a 55-acre lake with a final depth of about 70-80 feet (21-24 m) and a surface length of 3,000 feet (909 m), a size that should rival some of the country's largest lakes made for divers. In late December the deepest part of Mammoth Lake to form so far reached 35 feet (11 m). Mammoth Lake is the effort of property owners Kenny Vernor and his cousin Tim Sweeten, and Mike Cryer, who with his wife Michelle lease and manage the site, and own and manage the on-site Hydosports Scuba Shop, which they relocated from nearby Lake Jackson last October.
Most unusual about Mammoth Lake is that it has been built from scratch.
"No one has ever started a dive lake from the ground up," Cryer said. "They've always inherited a hole of water."
That's given the property owners a chance to collect and position several items. Some have been placed in the lakebed whole. Some have been fabricated into something else, like a military vehicle into a submarine. All have been modified with the safety of the diver in mind. Sweeten owns and Vernor manages a salvage company, giving them the opportunity to pore over items others might consider junk. They've got the remnants of an old church steeple and a few rusty ship anchors, and several boats.
Mammoth Lake gets its name from a discovery in 2003. A backhoe operator unearthed a mammoth tusk, then found a pair of tusks. A skull and other bones were found, and scientists determined the skull was about 38,000 years old and came from a Colombian mammoth, a relative of the woolly mammoth.
Describing exactly what's in the lake is no small task. But Cryer is more than happy to try, summarizing it by area:
NASA area: An F-5 Navy jet, a looping starship ride from the former Six Flags AstroWorld in Houston, an arm from a satellite, and a module used by astronauts in a neutral buoyancy lab.
Turtle Crossing: Five metal fabricated turtles, the biggest one measuring 8 feet long, 4 feet wide and 4 feet high.
The Bermuda Wreck Tangle: More than 20 boats are there now and 50 will be there when completed. You'll also find a 1932 Chrysler with wooden spoke wheels and 60-foot sailboat built in 1903 called Island Girl. It was a Prohibition-era rumrunner.
The Mayan Underworld: An area for certified cave divers, the Mayan Underworld is 35 feet deep, 120 feet long and made of pipe and metal. The Mayan Underworld includes facade pieces from the Mayan portion of AstroWorld.
A shark cage, another item salvaged from AstroWorld, hangs suspended from a crane boom.
Heavy equipment area: Includes two tanker trucks, antique fire trucks and a "truck plant" - a semi-trailer cab with its rear wheels buried in the ground.
Jurassic Park: In honor of the mammoth tusk and bones found at the site in 2003, two 14-foot-high replicas of the mammoths have been fabricated and erected at the very spot of the finds. One is pink and one is gray. Both were assembled with cement drums from mixer trucks.
Inspired by the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, Cryer is having boats planted in the ground in an area called the Lost City of Atlantis. Plastic piping is being used to provide the looks of the ruins of an old city.
Another attraction is a "downed submarine" built from an old military tank. One of the dive leaders at Hydrosports Scuba, Bob Wollam, crafted the 50-foot-long vessel, even creating a torpedo room, complete with pretend torpedoes. Divers also will find a hole in the sub, supposedly created by an 18-inch artillery shell lodged in the opposite side of the vessel.
A church steeple will stick out of the water 10 feet (3 m). A handicapped ramp will be constructed. Twelve platforms have been installed.
Above the water, in front of the dive shop, visitors will see a 1913 riveted steel hull lifeboat crashed onto some rocks.
One concern expressed by some divers is water visibility, a concern that Cryer says is being addressed in several ways with the advice of experts from Texas A&M University and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
First, the site has been graded in a way that prevents runoff from entering the lake. The water level will be kept below the lip of the lake, and water drained through an overflow pipe into a nearby creek if necessary. Asian-striped clams and dark mussels will be placed in the water for added clarity. These are not to be confused with invasive species like zebra mussels. To fight blue-green algae, a solar-powered pump will be installed to provide a current that keeps the algae from growing. Cryer said one state official said his only concern was that the measures to improve visibility would work so well that fish could not survive if they stayed in the top 20-30 feet (6-9 m) of the water column.
Cryer hopes to open Mammoth Lake to divers in late spring or early summer. Admission will be $20 per day, and membership options are being considered. For more information or more photos of the site, visit or call (979) 285-0600.
The newest dive site in the United States holds the kind of amenities sure to beckon divers: an old F-5 Navy jet, antique fire trucks, an old passenger bus, dive platforms, training pool, and an on-site dive shop, just to name a few. Still missing at this stop south of Houston in Clute, Texas, however, is the most critical component of any good dive site: water. Well, at least enough of it, anyway.
Mammoth Lake is the effort of property owners Kenny Vernor and his cousin Tim Sweeten, and Mike Cryer, who with his wife Michelle lease and manage the site, and own and manage the on-site Hydosports Scuba Shop, which they relocated from nearby Lake Jackson last October.
The Bermuda Wreck Tangle: More than 20 boats are there now and 50 will be there when completed. You'll also find a 1932 Chrysler with wooden spoke wheels and 60-foot sailboat built in 1903 called Island Girl. It was a Prohibition-era rumrunner.