The History of Diving Museum is celebrating their 20th year in 2025. If you visit the museum while you’re in Islamorada, you’ll see that they really do have the history of diving covered. Starting with the first free divers to modern day equipment, the History of Diving Museum has it all covered.
How The History of Diving Museum Got its Start
What do you do when you’ve been collecting something for forty years? (And I’m not talking about those Beany Babies that you put away for your retirement). Well, if you’re Drs. Joe and Sally Bauer, you open a non-profit museum in the middle of paradise.
In a victory for everyone who has never thrown away any obsolete charging cable because you might need one someday, the Bauers took their collection of dive equipment and opened up The History of Diving Museum. That’s right, the Marine Biologists retired and went on to become museum founders dragging their impressive collection of dive equipment from Ohio to Islamorada.
Exhibits
The museum starts you off with the history of the first divers, who pretty much just tied stones to themselves and held their breath. Next you move to the diving bells exhibit and different forms of helmets that they used, hint, sometimes it was just a bucket with glass eye holes. The circular path that you follow then takes you to pretty much every aspect of diving including:
- Diving machines
- Commercial diving
- Diving photography
- Helmet evolution
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And that’s not even the first half of the exhibits. There’s a fantastic wall of diving helmets from different countries dramatically displayed. Plus an exhibit featuring the quests of Florida Keys legendary treasure diver Art Mckee including some of his equipment and even a silver bar that he dug up.
You could easily spend two hours exploring the History of Diving Museum, and the amount of equipment in there is impressive. It’s fun to see how far diving equipment has evolved through the years.
The final exhibit in the History of Diving Museum changes every six months so that there’s always something new. The first half of the year is dedicated to “Dive into Art” where artists and artwork are featured. The second half is reserved for something from diving history, such as sponge collectors, underwater habitats, and salvaging.
Divers were an important part of rescuing cargo from shipwrecks from the 16th through the 19th century. The Shipwreck Museum in Key West showcases one of the most valuable wrecks ever recovered off of Key West.
The History of Diving Museum Gives Back
The History of Diving Museum is more than just an exhibit filled building. They also offer free “Immerse Yourself” lectures every month that cover everything from local diving history to diving safety to diving technology. You don’t even have to be there to attend, you can Zoom in! You can also go on a guided tour of the museum and get any questions that you might have answered, just keep it to diving questions. The guided tours are offered once a month and no, you can’t zoom into those.
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Giving back to the community is important to the History of Diving Museum. Through donations, the museum is able to offer their Museum in Motion program that brings a part of the museum to classrooms in the Florida Keys. Their Dive into Reading Book Club promotes reading to the students in Monroe County. And the KAPOW (Kids and the Power of Work) program introduces concepts to help students utilize their skills and talents to help them achieve their dreams and how they can translate that into a career in jobs associated with diving and museums.
The History of Diving Museum Library
Not being satisfied with just exhibits, lectures, and helping kids out, the History of Diving Museum also has a research center that houses the largest collection of “historic and rare literature of diving history currently in existence”. In existence! That’s impressive for a little museum in the Keys. With over 2,500 pieces of research material in books, prints and photographs, the library is perfect for students and scholars to study.
Just be aware, an appointment needs to be made to use the library, you can’t just wheel up and check out books. But, you can make arrangements to rent it out for meetings or conferences. You can browse around it during your tour of the museum, and their Immerse Yourself lectures also meet in the library.
The History of Diving Museum is located at MM 82.5 82990 Overseas Highway, Islamorada. Admission is $15/7 for adults/children, there are special rates for veterans and seniors. Hours are 10 – 5 every day except for Thanksgiving, Christmas day, and New Years Day.
Looking for more to do on your Florida Keys Vacation? Check out our Calendar of Events page so that you won’t miss a thing.
