Members and guests of the Rocky Mountain chapter traveled to Arvada on June 3 for a tour of the Clive Cussler Car Museum. This extensive collection of 105 significant automobiles, ranging in years from 1906 to 1965, was started by the late best-selling author Clive Cussler (1931-2020), a beloved member of The Explorers Club.
The Cussler Museum is dedicated to the preservation of astounding rare and vintage automobiles from all over the world. All are in working order and periodically driven.
As an underwater explorer, Cussler discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and wrote non-fiction books about his findings. He was also the founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), a non-profit organization with the same name as the fictional government agency that employs his famed character Dirk Pitt.
Perhaps his most famous find was discovery of the “South’s secret weapon” – the Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley. It was located by Cussler’s NUMA team in 27 feet of water in 1995 off Charleston, S.C., and recovered in 2000. In his book The Sea Hunters, Cussler called his search for the Hunley, “The toughest find of all.”