St. Thomas, Nevada: The Mormon Town That Lake Mead Swallowed

Summary

St. Thomas was a Mormon farming town in the Moapa Valley of southern Nevada, founded in 1865 by pioneers led by Thomas S. Smith near the confluence of the Muddy and Virgin rivers with the Colorado. At its height it was home to roughly 500 people, with a school, hotel, shops, a garage and a soda fountain, sustained by irrigated desert agriculture. It was abandoned in 1938 as the rising waters of Lake Mead, impounded behind the newly completed Hoover Dam, slowly drowned the town.

The town's history was bracketed by two displacements. The first came in 1871, when a boundary survey placed the settlement in Nevada rather than Arizona; when Nevada demanded several years of back taxes payable in gold, many settlers abandoned the site and moved to Utah. New Latter-day Saint settlers rebuilt St. Thomas in the 1880s, and it grew into a substantial valley town on the Arrowhead Trail auto route between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles before the federal dam project doomed it for good.

When Hoover Dam was completed and Lake Mead began to fill, the federal government bought out residents and the town was gradually inundated. The last holdout, Hugh Lord, is said to have rowed away from his home as the water reached it on 11 June 1938. For decades the town lay submerged beneath the reservoir, its location marked only on old maps.

Falling reservoir levels have since repeatedly resurrected St. Thomas. The ruins re-emerged in 1945 and 1963, and the sustained Colorado River drought of the 2000s and beyond — with notable exposures around 2002 and 2012 — has left much of the townsite walkable again. The National Park Service maintains an interpretive trail through the salt-crusted foundations within the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, where the ruins now serve as a stark gauge of the river's decline.

Timeline

1865

Town founded

Mormon pioneers led by Thomas S. Smith settle the site in the Moapa Valley near the confluence of the Muddy, Virgin and Colorado rivers.

1871

First abandonment

A boundary survey places the town in Nevada, which demands years of back taxes in gold; many settlers leave rather than pay and move to Utah.

1880s

Town rebuilt

New Latter-day Saint settlers return and re-establish St. Thomas, which grows into a valley town with a hotel, school and shops.

1935

Hoover Dam completed

The dam begins impounding the Colorado River to form Lake Mead, whose backing waters will eventually reach the Moapa Valley.

1938

Federal buyout and evacuation

The federal government buys out residents and the town empties as the reservoir rises; the cemetery is relocated to nearby Overton.

11 Jun 1938

Last resident leaves

Hugh Lord departs his home by boat as Lake Mead reaches it, marking the final abandonment of St. Thomas.

1945 & 1963

Early re-exposures

Lower reservoir levels briefly reveal the town's ruins, the first times residents and visitors can return to the site.

2002 & 2012

Drought re-exposure

Sustained low water during the Colorado River drought leaves much of the townsite walkable; the National Park Service maintains an interpretive trail through the ruins.

Before the Flood

St. Thomas grew up in the Moapa Valley where the Muddy River meets the Virgin and Colorado rivers, a green pocket in an otherwise harsh desert. Mormon settlers irrigated the fertile bottomland and built a working agricultural economy, raising fields of cantaloupes and melons along with grape vines and fruit orchards that gave the town a regional reputation. At its peak around 500 people lived there, and the settlement was substantial enough to have served as a county seat in the earliest territorial period.

The town had the trappings of a real community rather than a mere homestead cluster: a schoolhouse, a church, the two-storey Gentry Hotel, grocery stores, garages for the new automobiles, and the Hannig grocery and soda fountain — the ice cream parlor — that looms large in residents' memories. What it lacked were modern conveniences; St. Thomas had neither indoor plumbing nor electricity. Its position on the Arrowhead Trail — the first all-weather automobile road linking Salt Lake City to Los Angeles via Las Vegas, later carried by U.S. Route 91 — gave it passing trade and a connection to the wider world.

The community carried a long institutional memory of vulnerability. Its first abandonment in 1871 had come not from water but from a redrawn state line and a demand for back taxes payable in gold; the families who rebuilt St. Thomas in the 1880s did so knowing the place had already been given up once. That history of contingency shadowed the town until the dam finally ended it.

The Flooding

The decisive event was the construction of Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, completed in the mid-1930s, which created Lake Mead — one of the largest reservoirs in the United States. The reservoir was sized to control and store the flow of the entire lower Colorado, and as its waters backed up they reached inexorably into the Moapa Valley toward St. Thomas. There was no engineering remedy; the town simply lay within the future lakebed.

Unlike many drowned communities, St. Thomas saw little organised resistance. The federal government bought out the residents and relocated them, and the town emptied steadily through the 1930s as the water rose. The cemetery was moved to Overton, removing the dead ahead of the flood.

The abandonment is remembered through a single image: Hugh Lord, the last resident, leaving his home by boat on 11 June 1938 as Lake Mead lapped at his doorstep. With his departure the town that pioneers had twice built was given over entirely to the reservoir, and the desert farming community vanished beneath the rising water.

Contributing Factors

01

Federal megaproject scale

Hoover Dam's reservoir was engineered to store and regulate the entire lower Colorado River. Any settlement within that vast designed pool, including St. Thomas, was doomed regardless of its history or wishes.

02

Government buyout

Residents were compensated and resettled rather than fought over, which removed the basis for organised resistance. The orderly purchase of homes made the town's disappearance look like an administrative process rather than a contested loss.

03

A site already proven precarious

The town had been abandoned once before, in 1871, over a redrawn state line and a tax demand. That long history of contingency meant the community had shallow roots to anchor a fight against the dam.

04

Desert agriculture in the floodplain

The very feature that made St. Thomas viable — fertile, irrigable bottomland at the rivers' confluence — placed it at the lowest, most floodable point of the basin. Productive valley land and future reservoir bed were one and the same.

05

Arid-region overallocation

Lake Mead was promised more water than the Colorado reliably provides, so its level swings widely with drought. The same overallocation that strains the reservoir today periodically uncovers the town, exposing the gap between water promises and actual supply.

What Surfaces

St. Thomas is one of the clearest examples of a drowned town that the reservoir periodically gives back. As Lake Mead falls, salt-crusted concrete foundations, cisterns, the front steps of the schoolhouse, the fired bricks of the two-storey Gentry Hotel and the chimney of the Hannig ice cream parlor — now the highest point in the ruined town — emerge from the mud, fringed by invasive tamarisk. The town first reappeared in 1945, again in 1963, and then more enduringly through the long Colorado River drought, with prominent exposures from 2002 and again around 2012.

The National Park Service has turned the site into an interpretive destination. A dirt trail of a couple of miles leads from the parking area through the ruins within the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, allowing visitors to walk among the foundations and read the town's history on the ground where it stood. Former residents have held reunions at the resurfaced site, and the cemetery relocated to nearby Overton preserves the community's dead and its memory.

In the era of the Colorado River "megadrought," the resurfaced town has taken on a second life as a symbol. The more of St. Thomas that becomes visible, the lower Lake Mead has fallen — so the walkable ruins double as a vivid, accessible measure of the gap between the water the dam once promised and the supply the river can actually deliver.

Lessons

Reservoirs giveth and droughts taketh back.
Compensation does not erase displacement.
A drowned town can become a public measure of a river's decline.
A place abandoned once is more easily abandoned again.

References

St. Thomas, Nevada Wikipedia
St. Thomas, Nevada — Lake Mead National Recreation Area U.S. National Park Service
St. Thomas in Lake Mead: In the Midst of Drought, A Town Rediscovered National Trust for Historic Preservation