About Us

How it all began - A brief history of the Laurel Divers

In June of 1975, current club member Jim Hostetler and former club member Bob Mulvehill, decided to turn their interest in scuba diving into a local dive club. They traveled to Johnstown and recruited two members from the Johnstown YMCA class. The four of them met in a Coleman camper in Bob Mulvehill’s back yard and became The Ebensburg Scuba Club.

Each of the four members donated $5 to form a club treasury, half of which was spent on a year’s subscription to Skin Diver Magazine. Additional funds were added by using scuba to clean the bottom of the Ebensburg Community Pool for $2 each time.

By the summer of 1976 Bob Maurer, Rose Maurer, Tom Maurer, Ken Charlesworth and a dozen others had added their names to the membership ranks. The Hollidaysburg YMCA was where most basic scuba classes were being held, and the club soon changed its name to the "Laurel Divers" to include all of the Central Pennsylvania area.

The first Treasure Dive was held in 1976 at the same location where it is still being held today. Ten divers searched for colored golf balls used to mark the prizes. The top prize was a dive watch. A divers logbook, a handful of dive flag decals, and several discover diving bumper stickers rounded out the prize list.

Today, our club is nearly 100 members strong. The Treasure Dive attracts about 60 divers each year.

Thanks to Jim Hostetler for supplying the above information.