When the waters of Lake Mead drop low in dry years, the remains of the tiny Mormon outpost of St. Thomas, Nev., rise like Atlantis out of a watery grave.
Founded Jan. 8, 1865, the town passed into oblivion June 11, 1938, as the waters of Lake Mead backed up from Hoover Dam, creeping over the town's scattered remnants 60 miles northeast of here.Four times since then, Lake Mead has dropped low enough to expose the eerie remains of the tiny farming community. In its heyday, St. Thomas (named after founder Brother Thomas Smith) had fewer than 500 residents, a school, a two-story hotel, a garage and a couple of grocery stores.
There were no paved streets, no sidewalks, no police, no town government, no jail, no electricity. Near the convergence of the Muddy and Virgin rivers, it was a popular tourist stop for travelers along the Arrowhead Trail, which would later become I-15. A spur from the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad wound its way to the community, with trains hauling out produce from the lush Moapa Valley.
It wasn't the only haul made out of the area.
"There was a lot of bootlegging that went on up there," recalled historian Dennis McBride. "Nevada was relatively open as far as Prohibition. A lot of liquor came out of Las Vegas, through St. Thomas and into Arizona.
"By today's standards, it wasn't a remarkable town at all," McBride said, "just a neat, clean, small Mormon farming community."
Federal officials frequented the Gentry Hotel in the early 1900s, scouting a location for a massive project that would tame the Colorado River. First known as Boulder Dam, then changed to Hoover, the project would spell the beginning of the end for St. Thomas.
In 1930 a three-man appraisal team began buying up homes, land, memories.
Josephine Downey, 76, was an 11-year-old when word came she would have to move.
"I objected, I hated the thought of moving to Las Vegas," she recalled recently. "It was a big city of 5,000 people then."
Her father, Robert Gibson, the St. Thomas bishop for 19 years, wasn't too upset about the move, but many in the town felt the government bought them out on the cheap.
Prices averaged about $40 per acre.
The government moved the town cemetery to a new site on a barren knob two miles south of Overton, Nev., where many of the displaced settled.
Resettling in the depth of the Depression was a chore. The Fenton Whitney family moved northeast to Hurricane, Utah. Their settlement was $5,500 and a new Chevrolet. Others headed to Arizona, Idaho or California.
By the summer of 1938, water had backed into the small community - or what was left of it. Workers had dismantled the buildings, brick by brick, leaving only the foundations.
On June 11, 1938, postmaster Leland Whitmore canceled 4,000 letters as Lake Mead lapped at his door. It would be the date that marked the death of the town.
When the lake is low, the remnants of St. Thomas rise out of the mud, sand and silt, yielding building foundations, stripped trees and abandoned cars.
Such was the case in 1945, 1952, 1964 and 1991.
Dozens of residents returned for a picnic at their former homesite in 1952.
"It didn't look very good," recalled Ferris Bunker, an 83-year-old Las Vegan who moved from St. Thomas at age 18 with his parents and four siblings. "There were tree stumps everyplace. There were foundations for homes, but no homes."
The picnic was held on the remains of the old school building.
"It was on the order of a haunting movie," Bunker recalled recently. "It was kinda sad, to go over to where we had lived. We had left a couple of old cars that were broken down. They were still there, and rusted.
"It didn't look like what I had remembered," Bunker said sadly. "It was sorta surreal."
IF YOU GO: From Las Vegas, travel north on Interstate 15 for 51 miles, then south on Highway 169 for 12 miles to Overton. The St. Thomas Cemetery is a half-mile south of Overton. The area where the town lies buried is about 7 miles south of town off Highway 169.