West Texas pool offers rare desert diving

[Zach]

West Texas pool offers rare desert diving
TOYAHVALE, Texas (AP) -- It's certainly not the first place you think of when you want to go diving. In fact, it may be the last. Way out in arid West Texas, surrounded by the tumbleweeds and cactus you expect to find in this part of the country, Balmorhea State Park offers the unusual opportunity to do a little scuba diving in the Chihuahuan Desert.
"It's rare; there are not this many places around this little oasis out in the desert," said scuba diving instructor Bill Murrill, who regularly brings his class on the 2 1/2-hour drive from Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The oasis is located just south of Pecos, about 200 miles from El Paso near the foothills of the Davis Mountains. In addition to the huge 3 1/2-million gallon L-shaped pool that takes up nearly 2 acres, there's a concession building, bath houses and a hotel built during the New Deal public works projects of the Great Depression.

The limestone and adobe buildings, with red tile roofs and wooden portals, were built by Company 1856 of the Civilian Conservation Corps in a Spanish colonial style of architecture.

But the big draw is the water. Read more...