A diver's paradise — in upstate New York

Updated: 8:30 p.m. ET Sept. 27, 2007

OSWEGO, N.Y. - A half-mile offshore, 25 feet below the surface of Lake Ontario, the hull of the David B. Mills lies wrecked in three large sections, broken apart after a violent October storm 88 years ago after running aground on Ford Shoals.

Strewn about the flat, rocky bottom are the 202-foot-long barge's propeller, anchors, winch, engine, boiler, rudder and various pieces of machinery. Around the debris, perch, whitefish, bass, pike, drum and alewives — joined by a few curious scuba divers — dart through the lucent water.

Typically regarded as a paradise for hikers, climbers and campers, upstate New York also offers some of the finest freshwater scuba diving in the nation — a cloistered natural attribute state officials and scuba enthusiasts are trying to promote through the creation of two "diving trails."

The Mills wreck is part of the Dive the Seaway Trail, which will offer exploration of five diving sites along the 454-mile Seaway Trail Scenic Byway, which runs along the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario, Niagara River and Lake Erie, waterways filled with shipwrecks, rock formations and aquatic life.

The other trail is the Underwater Blueway Trail, a project in its pilot year with six communities that is being designed to provide diving access to shipwrecks and supply maritime heritage information to divers and non-divers.

While a handful of states have created underwater parks for diving, they are located on ocean water, said Doug McNeese, president of Scuba Schools International, one of the country's leading diving certification organizations. New York is the first state to link a series of freshwater sites into a "trail," and could become a model for other states, McNeese said.

"The Empire State is a maritime state," said Joe Zarzynski, an underwater archaeologist and a member of the New York State Divers Association who helped open the state's first underwater preserve in Lake George in 1993. "New York's inland and coastal waters carried the development of our state ... little is done to inform the public about that fact."

One of the defining battles of the American Revolution was fought near Valcour Island on Lake Champlain, where a fledgling colonial navy was born and turned back the British to help secure the young nation's survival, he said. In the 19th century, the Erie Canal was built across upstate New York, transforming the state's economy and opening the door to the nation's westward expansion.

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The Seaway dive trail was initiated in 2003, two years after the Mills was designated a state Submerged Cultural Preserve and Dive Site. The Mills, a dive for any beginning open water diver, is just one of 1,500 shipwrecks in Lake Ontario, hundreds of them diveable. There are thousands more throughout the Great Lakes, whose cold fresh waters preserve the centuries-old ships and artifacts.

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Other sites on the Dive the Seaway Trail include Eagle Wings, an ancient volcanic rock formation in the St. Lawrence River near Clayton; the Islander, a shore access shipwreck in Alexandria Bay; and the St. Peter, a 135-foot, three-masted schooner that sank in 117 feet of water in Lake Ontario east of Rochester in 1898 and is said to be haunted.

A fifth site, which will be an intermediate dive, has yet to be chosen, but will likely be in Lake Erie, said David White, a recreation specialist with New York Sea Grant and the coordinator for the Dive The Seaway Trail project.

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