Balmorhea State Park

Balmorhea State Park in the remote Trans-Pecos region of West Texas is home to one of the most extraordinary and unique swimming and diving experiences in all of North America — a massive, spring-fed swimming pool built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s that is fed by San Solomon Springs and maintains a constant discharge of millions of gallons of pristine desert spring water, creating a 1.75-acre pool of extraordinary clarity in the heart of the Chihuahuan Desert. The pool is the largest spring-fed swimming pool in the world, and its water — maintained at a constant 72 to 76 degrees Fahrenheit year-round and filtered only by the natural limestone aquifer — achieves a clarity that rivals Florida's finest springs: visibility is typically 30 to 40 feet even in the largest sections of the pool. Diving at Balmorhea is a beginner-appropriate experience limited to the designated diving areas of the pool, with maximum depths reaching approximately 12 meters (about 40 feet) in the deepest sections near the spring vents. The resident wildlife of the pool is remarkable given its desert location: two endemic and endangered fish species have been protected at Balmorhea since the pool provides their only remaining habitat. The Comanche Springs pupfish and the Pecos gambusia — tiny, colorful desert fish found nowhere else on Earth — swim through the clear water alongside more common species. Soft-shelled turtles inhabit the pool, their flat, leathery forms visible resting on the sandy bottom. The surreal quality of diving in crystal-clear water surrounded by the arid landscape of the Chihuahuan Desert — with the Chinati Mountains visible on the horizon and the scent of desert air mixing with the mineral freshness of spring water — makes Balmorhea one of the most memorable and unusual diving experiences anywhere in the American Southwest.