CLUTE, Texas-
The giant sand pit where the remains of a mammoth and saber-toothed tiger were once discovered may soon be filled with much more modern artifacts.
There are plans to throw in a bus, a couple antique fire trucks and even a space shuttle lookalike that once thrilled visitors at the now defunct Astroworld amusement park in Houston.
Why the random collection?
Developers are hoping the items and many others–including an old F-5 Navy jet already in the 50-acre pit–will help create one of the nation's largest lakes reserved for scuba divers seeking to explore large objects.
"This is a dream come true," Mike Cryer, who runs Hydrosports Scuba Shop in nearby Lake Jackson, said as he gazed over a hole as deep as 70 feet that by next year should be at least partially filled and become Mammoth Lake. "We're in such a unique position. No one has ever started a dive lake from the ground up. They've always inherited a hole of water."
Cryer, 52, and his wife, Michelle, 27, will provide diving expertise for the project's design and manage the operation. The character will be supplied by two divers/junk collectors.
Kenny Vernor and his cousin Tim Sweeten, whose company owns the soon-to-be-exhausted pit that's produced sand since the 1950s, have been prowling the landscape for potential seascape while working for their salvage company.
Vernor, general manager Vernor Material & Equipment Co., and Sweeten, the firm's safety officer, always have an eye out for stuff other folks might consider junk.
"When we see something that might be interesting, a lot of it is because we're doing a job and that's part of the bid," said Sweeten, 46. "Instead of selling it for scrap, we hang on to it."
Like the metal skeleton of an old church steeple. Or a couple of rusty ship anchors. And a number of boats, one more than 40 feet long and another a 36-footer–all destined for the bottom of Mammoth Lake.
Other things are undefinable. The salvage company has a scrap contract with NASA, meaning first crack at space agency throwaways. And while they don't know what some objects are, the collection of twisted pipes and metal spheres remains intriguing.
"Scuba diving itself is very exciting, rewarding," said Vernor, also 46. "You put something down there for somebody to look at just increases everything exponentially. You can get closer, get different angles. If you want to see what the top looks like you just kick your fins and get up there and check it out."
Diving in and around big junk isn't anything new.
At Athens Scuba Park, a lake about 70 miles southeast of Dallas, a couple of sunken buses and a military cargo plane are among the underwater attractions.
In Bethlehem, Pa., a former quarry called the Aqua Park at Dutch Springs attracts hundreds of divers weekly who swim in and around a bus, fire truck, car, helicopters and a trolley. The park, in its 26th year, has a 50-acre lake that makes it among the nation's largest devoted to diving. Mammoth Lake's size should be close to the acreage of the Pennsylvania site.
Ted McKelvey of the Houston Scuba Academy said a big hurdle for developers of the new lake will be keeping the water clear for divers.
"The thing about sand pit lakes, and any lake in general, is it's relatively murky water compared with going in the ocean," he said. "It's just the way it is, the nature of the beast."
Vernor said they've been talking to Texas Parks and Wildlife and lake management companies about ways to keep the water clear, and they're confident they can do so.
It'll be a while before they know, however. With an average depth of 40 to 45 feet, the pit could take as long as a year to fill.
Pumps keep the hole relatively free of the fresh water that flows from underground. By the end of the year, when the last marketable sand has been removed, the pumps will be shut and water allowed to build. By then, Vernor hopes contouring of the future lake bottom and sides will be complete, along with placement of all the artifacts. Besides the items they've been collecting, they also plan to stock the lake with fish.
One highly coveted item they're hoping to acquire is an old military tank.
"For a diver, we'd like to see the fish, and that's one of the things with structures," Cryer says. "Fish like them. There's also something uniquely cool about diving around an antique fire truck, or a tank, or crawling inside a boat that used to float. There's a lot of explorer in most divers."
Officials in Clute, a city of some 11,000 about an hour's drive south of Houston, have been enthusiastic. The property has won approval for a change in zoning and this week a permit for the dive lake is up for discussion at a public hearing.
"I'm behind the project," Mayor Calvin Shiflet told The Facts, Brazoria County's daily newspaper.
In November 2003 a backhoe operator at the pit unearthed a mammoth tusk, then a week later found a pair of tusks. A skull and other bones also were found. Scientists determined the skull was about 38,000 years old and came from a Colombian mammoth, a warm climate relative of the woolly mammoth.
Joseph Ramirez, 30, who said his family for about 15 years has lived on and owns some of the property that overlooks the pit, said the lake will attract more traffic but should be good for the city.
Then he grins.
"I've got lakefront property," he says.
