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Tuesday, September 11, 2007 |
Diving into history
Shipwrecks hold secrets to Lake Coeur d'Alene's past
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They call themselves "aquanauts." Just as astronauts explore space and the world above, Rick Inman, Alan Worst and Tom Michalski have taken to exploring the one beneath.
"I'll never be an astronaut and never go into space, but diving's the closest you can get," said Inman, 49. "You're weightless and you're using a complete breathing system like you would in outer space."
These local divers share a deep fascination for wreck diving in the freshwater lakes of the Inland Northwest.
Despite the region's landlocked geographical location, the shipwrecks are scattered about our inland waters. Most of them came to rest at varying depths within Lake Coeur d'Alene.
"The history intrigues me," said Worst, a Coeur d'Alene resident who met commercial diver Michalski through diving that Michalski has done for Worst's water pumping and systems company. "All the wrecks down there are tied back to Coeur d'Alene's history as a silver mining and timber town.
"It's like an underwater history tour of the lake."
Coeur d'Alene prospered from silver mining in the late 1800s, and the industry boom. Steamboats and tugs were built to help transport silver ore and, later, timber across the lake. Occasionally, they didn't make it. About 17 old boats now lie in the Lake Coeur d'Alene's 25,100-acre graveyard.
Most of these wrecks are in the northern portion of the lake. Worst and Inman say Michalski is the only diver in the area who has explored every one of them.
Indeed, Michalski found most of them. The 65-year-old diver has spent the last 40 years scouring the Coeur d'Alene River for wrecks. He used to skulk the fairgrounds for former steamboat men, striking up conversations with old timers to get them to tell him where the steamboat wrecks might be.
Now, Michalski is the old-timer, the regional expert who answers questions from the next wave of underwater history buffs.
"It's all about the challenge of finding it," Michalski said.
In 1980, after two years of searching, Michalski found the final resting place of The Flyer, a 130-foot passenger vessel. Built in 1906, the ship has been sitting in 140 feet of water since it was scuttled in 1938.
Michalski turned treasure hunter when he found the boat's big 7-foot-wide propeller intact. After returning to blow off the propeller shaft with dynamite, commercial equipment with 1,500 pounds of lift was needed to raise the propeller from the mud.
Among his most prized treasures from underwater hunting is a 5-foot tall brass anchor that belongs to a ship that has never been found. The Kootenai, a metal-hulled boat from the late 1880s is rumored to have been scuttled near Three Mile Point.
Michalski found the Kootenai's 256-pound hand-forged brass anchor whole and undamaged. Today it's the centerpiece of a water structure in his backyard.
Other secrets remain to be discovered under the lake's surface.
"The Kootenai was towing a barge with a 168 tons of silver ore when the barge tipped and dumped all that ore in the lake," Michalski said "All that ore is out there somewhere, no one's ever found it, but nowadays you wouldn't be able to bring it up because you'd be disturbing the lake bottom."
Sediments on the bottom of Lake Coeur d'Alene act as a seal covering a century's worth of mining waste saturated with mercury, lead and other toxic substances washed into the lake from Silver Valley mining operations. Stirring up the lake bottom would risk mixing the toxic substances into the lake water.
Meanwhile, there's plenty to see under in the lake's underwater museum without disturbing the bottom. Among them:
A tugboat of unknown origin lies in about 50 feet of water just off the shore of Tubbs Hill with a light bulb still intact and encased within a metal cage.
The Bonnie Doone shipwreck is visible about 20 feet under the lake's clear water even for non-divers who stand on the bridge that connects to Coeur d'Alene resort boardwalk and look down into the water on a calm day.
The Viking at Arrow Point is another novice-level dive. The wreck lies fairly flat about 45 feet below surface. Formerly known as The Cougar, the Viking got its name after its enterprising owner decided to transform the tug boat into a Viking ship by putting on a dragon head and 10 oar locks.
The Harrison, a 165-foot steamer lying in shallow waters at Steven's Point, is an easy offshore dive for beginners. The top-most portion of the wreck is about 12 feet from the surface, while the bottom sits at about 45 feet.
Scuttled and sunk as were most of the other Lake Coeur d'Alene wrecks the Harrison's hull is relatively intact, and her name is still visible on the side of the vessel.
"They didn't want to burn the boats by the docks because they were afraid of setting the docks on fire," Worst said. "So they used to drag the boats out to Three Mile Point and burn them there. But the wind blows up the lake, so anything they burned would drift up and sink. That's why there are so many wrecks in this part of the lake."
Even though the Viking and Harrison and are relatively shallow dives, Inman and Worst caution against beginners diving them unsupervised.
"Don't dive the wrecks yourself, try to get a mentor," said Inman, who heads a weekly recreational dive group out of Atlantis Aquatics in Spokane Valley that other divers are welcome to join. "Try to get a mentor because there can be overhead environments for some of the wrecks in Lake Coeur d'Alene that's when you come up and the dock's above you or in other places, there's all kinds of electrical lines around.
"Most of the time, it's also pretty dark down there, with limited visibility."
Inman also strongly advises that divers do not try to swim into the wrecks. Even though wood is somewhat preserved in the lake's freshwater environment, some of the wrecks can be unstable.
Conditions get increasingly perilous the deeper you go. The deepest discovered wreck in Lake Coeur d'Alene is The Flyer the vessel that yielded its propeller to Michalski which sits at about 140 feet.
Wrecks aside, there are also other things to be found in Lake Coeur d'Alene and other local dive spots, such as Lake Pend Oreille and the Spokane River.
Worst believes there are slot machines from Coeur d'Alene's old casinos lying in the waters by Tubbs Hill.
After two years of searching, Inman found three cars of a train wreck from the 1900s in Lake Pend Oreille. He also found a gun wrapped in a bloody towel at Blue Creek Bay that he turned in to the police, who used it to help solve a murder investigation.
Inman was perhaps unwise in unearthing a 40-caliber launch grenade from the depths of the Spokane River. The discovery prompted an Air Force bomb squad to show up at his house. The shell turned out to be a practice grenade.
It all adds to the appeal of exploration aquanaut style.
"We're going to places where we see things nobody's ever seen," Worst said. "And that's pretty rare nowadays."