BONNE TERRE, Mo. — Rather than head outside for a recreational adventure, athletes in Missouri can head underground — to scuba dive, play tennis and, if one man has his way, even try their hand at subterranean ice skating or kayaking.
Missouri is often called the Cave State, with an international reputation for its natural marvels. But it's the state's mining history that has created huge manmade caverns that have been recast as underground recreational areas.
Businessman Tom Kerr has a $50 million plan to convert an eight million square-foot sand mine into an athletic complex housing extreme, recreational and Olympic-level facilities near Crystal City, Mo.
The concept might sound far-fetched elsewhere, but doesn't seem impossible in these parts. In southwest Missouri people play tennis on courts carved out from limestone caverns.
And Kerr is planning the facility about a half-hour drive from Bonne Terre Mine, a billion-gallon underground scuba diving site located in a former lead mine that a suburban St. Louis couple, Doug and Cathy Goergens, bought in 1979. They converted the now-partially flooded mine into an attraction that National Geographic Adventure magazine placed in the Top 10 of its one hundred best adventures in America earlier this decade, calling it "part Pompeii, part Lara Croft."
BONNE TERRE MINE: 39 N. Allen St., Bonne Terre, Mo.;
http://www.2dive.com/ or 314-209-7200. Diving in a billion-gallon underground cavern; also offers dive lessons, dive packages, boating and walking tours.
Recreation heads underground in Missouri 
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