Ohio: The Midwest’s Local Diving Capital

At Just Add Water, we never cease to be amazed by the dizzying array of local diving opportunities available to area residents. With a dive season that lasts from April through October, and visibility well above the national norm, you can go diving every weekend and never see the same thing twice. Among these many local diving opportunities:

• Our Niagara River drift diving trips.
• Our annual wreck diving excursions to Tobermory, Canada, wreck diving capital of the Great Lakes.
• Local wreck diving in Lake Erie and long-weekend getaways to the Saint Lawrence River.
• Not one, but four different rock quarries within one to three hour’s drive of the Cleveland metro area.

One of the great things about our local, inland dive sites is that you don’t need a reservation, nor do you need to dive on someone else’s schedule. If you have access to a car, truck or SUV, dive gear and a buddy, you can go when and where you want.

In this section, you’ll find a comprehensive guide to all four of our closest local dive sites. There are pictures, descriptions, links to articles from Dive Training magazine, a detailed road map (PDF) with turn-by-turn directions to all four sites.

White Star County Park: With its proximity to a wide assortment of food and lodging, ample parking, easy entries and exits, good visibility and a wide variety of things to see and do under water, it’s no wonder White Star Quarry is our dive site of choice for open-water training, More…

Portage Quarry: With 23 acres, Portage is among the largest diveable quarries anywhere. Once an active source of building materials for local highways, quarry operations ceased when natural springs turned a 70-foot-deep hole in the ground into one of the Midwest’s leading dive sites, More…

Gilboa Quarry: At 137 feet, Gilboa has the distinction of being the deepest inland diver training site in the Midwest. You don’t have to be a technical diving student, however, to dive Gilboa. There is plenty to see and do at much shallower depths, More…

Nelson Ledges Quarry Park: Nelson Ledges Quarry Park has the distinction of being the closest inland dive site to the Cleveland metro area. Its topography is also distinctly different from that found in rock quarries further west, More…

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