Lake Mead Is So Low a Town Drowned in 1938 Is Back — And It's Not the Only Thing Surfacing
Below the Waterline
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In 1938, the last man in St. Thomas, Nevada, rowed away from his own front yard as Lake Mead swallowed his town. Eighty-eight years later, the town is back in the open air, and it is not the only thing the lake has been giving back.
St. Thomas was founded by Mormon settlers in 1865, abandoned once over a tax dispute, revived as a stop on the Arrowhead Trail, and finally erased when Hoover Dam created the largest reservoir in America. Today, decades of drought have pulled Lake Mead so far back that you can walk its main street again: foundations, steps, cisterns and the floor of an old ice cream parlor, sitting under the desert sun.
In this documentary we follow the full story of the town that was lost twice, and the other secrets Lake Mead has surrendered as the water dropped: a World War II landing craft, a B-29 bomber that crashed during a Cold War research flight, and the 2022 discovery of human remains inside a barrel near Hemenway Harbor.
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 The last man in St. Thomas
03:12 A town lost before the water came
06:24 The dam that changed the West
07:56 Buying out a hometown
09:22 June 11, 1938
10:58 The town that kept resurfacing
11:36 The drought and the return of St. Thomas
13:18 2022: the barrel in the mud
15:01 The World War II landing craft
16:00 The B-29 bomber at the bottom of the lake
17:38 Minimum power pool and dead pool
19:21 Lost twice
This is a history documentary built from real research. Sources are listed below. Visual reconstructions are illustrative and do not show exact historical locations.
📚 SOURCES
National Park Service, Lake Mead National Recreation Area: history of St. Thomas
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: Hoover Dam and Boulder Canyon Project history
Library of Congress, Chronicling America: historical newspaper archive
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department statements (May 2022), as reported by the Associated Press and the Las Vegas Review-Journal
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: Lake Mead water level data
💬 Have you walked the St. Thomas trail, or does your family have roots in the Moapa Valley? Tell us in the comments. We read every one.
🔔 Below the Waterline tells the true stories of the towns beneath America's lakes. New documentaries every Tuesday and Friday.
#LakeMead #DrownedTown #History
1 Comments
Lake Mead Is So Low a Town Drowned in 1938 Is Back — And It's Not the Only Thing Surfacing
Below the Waterline
836 views
In 1938, the last man in St. Thomas, Nevada, rowed away from his own front yard as Lake Mead swallowed his town. Eighty-eight years later, the town is back in the open air, and it is not the only thing the lake has been giving back.
St. Thomas was founded by Mormon settlers in 1865, abandoned once over a tax dispute, revived as a stop on the Arrowhead Trail, and finally erased when Hoover Dam created the largest reservoir in America. Today, decades of drought have pulled Lake Mead so far back that you can walk its main street again: foundations, steps, cisterns and the floor of an old ice cream parlor, sitting under the desert sun.
In this documentary we follow the full story of the town that was lost twice, and the other secrets Lake Mead has surrendered as the water dropped: a World War II landing craft, a B-29 bomber that crashed during a Cold War research flight, and the 2022 discovery of human remains inside a barrel near Hemenway Harbor.
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 The last man in St. Thomas
03:12 A town lost before the water came
06:24 The dam that changed the West
07:56 Buying out a hometown
09:22 June 11, 1938
10:58 The town that kept resurfacing
11:36 The drought and the return of St. Thomas
13:18 2022: the barrel in the mud
15:01 The World War II landing craft
16:00 The B-29 bomber at the bottom of the lake
17:38 Minimum power pool and dead pool
19:21 Lost twice
This is a history documentary built from real research. Sources are listed below. Visual reconstructions are illustrative and do not show exact historical locations.
📚 SOURCES
National Park Service, Lake Mead National Recreation Area: history of St. Thomas
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: Hoover Dam and Boulder Canyon Project history
Library of Congress, Chronicling America: historical newspaper archive
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department statements (May 2022), as reported by the Associated Press and the Las Vegas Review-Journal
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation: Lake Mead water level data
💬 Have you walked the St. Thomas trail, or does your family have roots in the Moapa Valley? Tell us in the comments. We read every one.
🔔 Below the Waterline tells the true stories of the towns beneath America's lakes. New documentaries every Tuesday and Friday.
#LakeMead #DrownedTown #History