The Sept. 16 print issue of the Guadalupe County Communicator newspaper, based in Santa Rosa, N.M., published a long but gripping story about the town’s Blue Hole.
The Blue Hole is a spring-fed sinkhole about 80 feet deep, with a water temperature in the 60s year-round. For decades, it’s been a popular draw for scuba divers and as a short side trip for Route 66 travelers.
A metal grate covers a small opening at the bottom of the Blue Hole from where water flows at 3,000 gallons a minute. The Blue Hole didn’t used to have that grate. But after a tragedy in the spring of 1976, it was installed.
Eight scuba divers from Oklahoma splashed into the Blue Hole on March 10 that morning, and two failed to return. It was determined by a diving team from New Mexico State Police that the missing divers had gone into a previously unexplored cave of “unknown depth” in the hole.
Tom Hawkins, a retired judge who was part of the police diving team, provided a lot of the detail to the Communicator’s story. The cave entrance was so narrow that some divers had to remove their equipment to swim through. In the second chamber of the cave, Hawkins recalled seeing ceilings of shafts, cracks and crevasses. Another chamber, the Tee-Pee Room, contained a ceiling that “looks as though thousands of ice cream cones were hanging invertly.”
One of the bodies was found a day after the rescue mission started. The second diver’s body wasn’t recovered until weeks later. The searches were highly dangerous — exhaust air from the rescue divers loosened rocks in the chambers’ ceilings, causing cave-ins. Hawkins himself was nearly trapped when a three-foot rock fell on him.
At one point, Hawkins and a few of his colleagues were 225 feet below the surface.
“When I went down to the third chamber, I was using a 100,000 candle-power flashlight,” Hawkins said. “I could see easily in the chamber, but I couldn’t see to the other side — or the bottom — of the third chamber. Just imagine yourself in Carlsbad Caverns, but filled with water and without light.”
After the accidents, those caves were blocked for good, leaving modern day divers to wonder what’s beyond the grate.
It’s a great story. If you’re passing through Santa Rosa, I recommend you pick up a copy of this issue. For more about the Communicator, go to its Facebook page.
Ron, I’m always so thankful to you for your site and all that you provide…it’s the history like this that would undoubtedly end up being “lost history” if it wasn’t for all you do. Like many of the things you put on here, I found this fascinating. Thanks for letting all of us get the chance to know as much as we can possibly ever learn about the Mother Road. You are invaluable to us all.