, Legend Heading
LegendHeading
Sunken City · Overton Arm, Lake Mead, Nevada

St. Thomas, the Town Lake Mead Drowned

St. Thomas, the Town Lake Mead Drowned: still unexplained.

◆ Evidence tier: TraditionFlooded 1938 · resurfaces in drought – present◎ Recently discovered — still growing

The Story

What is claimed · what is sourced · what is still disputed

Mormon settlers built St. Thomas where the Muddy River met the Colorado in 1865, farms, shops, five hundred souls. Then Hoover Dam rose and the water came for it; the last resident rowed away in June 1938 as the lake closed over his roof. But the drought keeps giving it back. Since 2002 the foundations, the school steps, and the old ice-cream parlour have stood in the sun again, a town that surfaces and drowns with the level of the lake.

What remains open

  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.

The lure: A whole Mormon pioneer town, lost and found with the water line

Evidence & Corroboration

Distinct evidence classes that independently agree — never a single score

Historical tradition
Newspaper mention
Scholarly support
Archival evidence
Official map/chart
Corroborated
Verified fact

? Open

  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.

Historic Maps

Period cartography · Library of Congress & DPLA via IIIF · deep-zoom

◇ No period cartography on file yet. The IIIF map adapters (Library of Congress, David Rumsey, DPLA) fill this automatically when they find charts of this place.

Period Newspaper Coverage

Dated OCR mentions · Chronicling America / loc.gov — a mention proves circulation, nothing more

◇ No dated newspaper coverage yet. Chronicling America runs against this legend automatically and lands dated clips here.

Archival Documents

Manuscripts, government records, company filings · NARA · IIIF · registries

◇ No archival documents on file yet. NARA and national-archive adapters attach primary records here as they surface.

Timeline

Every event source-backed · unsourced events are dropped, never invented

◇ No dated, source-backed events yet. Timeline entries are built only from evidence with a confirmed date -- nothing is estimated or invented.

Sources & Citations

Typed, first-class citations with retrieval provenance

◇ No typed citations compiled yet -- check Historic Maps, Newspapers, and Archives above as they fill in.

From the archive

← Back to the Map

Possible connections

Unverified leads, not established facts — legends below share a rough area and a rough era with this one. Worth investigating, not worth citing.