Pieces of the past emerge from the mud
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By Scott Gold / Los Angeles Times
OVERTON, Nev. — Early last year, fishermen searching for bass and bluegill on a northern finger of Lake Mead saw a curious cluster of concrete blocks jutting out of the water. It turned out to be the chimney of what had been, 65 years ago, an ice cream parlor.
Within months, other ruins began to emerge from the lake: the steps of a nearby schoolhouse, the foundation of the old Gentry Hotel, where President Hoover once bunked for the night.
Today, the water line of Lake Mead, once 6 miles to the northwest, is a half mile to the southeast. Now, there is a sun-soaked valley, along with the ruins of St. Thomas, a town that was, until very recently, under 64 feet of water.
For nearly six years, a drought has afflicted much of the United States. Some regions haven't been as dry as they are today for 1,000 years or more, scientists say, and there have been terrible consequences: crop losses, falling electricity production at dams, savage wildfires.
For historians, however, the drought has brought an intriguing diversion. Pieces of the past that had long been submerged — and often forgotten — are emerging again as lakes and rivers shrink.
St. Thomas was formed in 1865 by Mormons who were dispatched to southern Nevada to plant cotton and push the reach of their church toward the West Coast.
For a spell, the town was the epitome of the western frontier, a bleak outpost where devout religion clashed with liquor and miners, where dreams of a better life were shattered by debilitating heat and disease. In 1938, it was erased — flooded, intentionally, when the construction of Hoover Dam created Lake Mead.
Eva Jensen, a Nevada Department of Cultural Affairs archaeologist, stood in the middle of the town's ruins recently, shaking her head in dismay and wonder.
"The circumstances of this are not good," she said. "But it is fascinating to watch it happen. It's just incredible how much has been exposed, and how fast it has happened."
Historians and archaeologists have reported similar discoveries across the West and the South, drawing widespread interest from outdoors enthusiasts, sightseers and students.
Not far from St. Thomas, in a northern stretch of Lake Mead known as the Overton Arm, prehistoric salt mines have been exposed. Near Roosevelt, Ariz., in an area that was flooded a century ago to build a reservoir, relics left behind by Salado Indians, including ornate jars and pots believed to explain religious parables, have surfaced.
In Utah's Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a prized geographic formation known as the Cathedral in the Desert — long swamped by the creation of Lake Powell — has been revealed again as water levels have dropped more than 70 feet. In northeast Georgia, a town founded by tobacco dealers in the 1700s, lost when the government created Thurmond Lake, has emerged.
Judy Bense, chairwoman of the Anthropology Department at the University of West Florida in Pensacola and the president-elect of the Society for Historical Archeology, said the drought had created an exciting time for academicians — and a fleeting opportunity, since the weather will eventually turn and the water will rise again.
Many of the objects that have re-emerged, perhaps most, have little historical significance. A large water-clarifying tank that juts above the surface of Lake Mead, for instance, is more of a menace to pleasure boaters and fishermen than anything. Other finds are significant, however.
Archaeologists, for instance, recently discovered ancient canoes embedded in a lake bank near Gainesville, Fla., Bense said. Radiocarbon dating showed that the canoes were between 3,000 and 5,000 years old, causing some historians to rethink the conventional understanding of historical water transport trends and migration patterns in the region.
Near Zapata, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, portions of a colonial town established in the 1750s — intentionally flooded when the two countries dammed the Rio Grande to create the Falcon Lake reservoir — have emerged again. They include Nuestra Senora del Refugio, a historic Spanish mission, as well as facilities where historians believe the world's finest lace was produced more than 200 years ago.
"Archaeologists are used to this kind of thing," Bense said. "But even we are amazed at what we are finding."
Because historical sites are emerging so quickly, academicians and government regulators are having a hard time figuring out what to do with them — how to catalog, study and, if necessary, preserve them.
Jensen and other historians are pushing for a full-fledged archaeological dig at St. Thomas, about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas, but state and federal officials still are sorting through red tape.
Virtually all that officials have been able to do so far is trim back the tamarisk shrubs that have taken over newly dry areas, offering shade to coyotes and lizards that quickly replaced the bass. Even those efforts are lagging, making it difficult to access some of the building foundations.
Amid the ruins of colonial towns and Native communities that have emerged around the country are tens of thousands of artifacts — some of them junk, but all of them worth a look to historians. For several reasons, the artifacts are in peril.
Many wooden structures and artifacts were protected by being underwater, largely because the pieces were shielded from oxygen. Now that they are above water, archaeologists fear the wooden relics will dry out and crumble.
In the Ocala National Forest in Florida, where several small lakes have vanished, portions of a well-preserved 500-year-old fish trap were exposed recently, and federal officials feared it would be lost. At St. Thomas, Jensen said, delicate window frames on many of the houses, made of wood hauled in from the Utah hills, soon would dry out and fall apart.
And looters have descended upon numerous ruins.
Federal officials have banned overnight camping near St. Thomas, primarily to guard against scavengers who were coming out at night with metal detectors, some in search of old railroad ties and buggy parts, and others apparently driven, officials said, by a false rumor that a $5 gold piece was discovered there recently.
It long has been illegal to take artifacts from federally protected land, and more than a dozen people have been charged with preservation law violations at Lake Mead.
The Hannig Ice Cream Parlor's chimney, the highest point of the St. Thomas ruins, had popped up during a few dry spells in the past. This time it is different: The entire town is visible.
Today at the ghostly, isolated site, portions of about 40 buildings have been exposed.
Most were built of tan concrete blocks that look intensely bright when illuminated by the desert sun and contrasted against the colorful mesas and hills behind them. The blocks, crafted of silt lifted from the nearby Muddy and Virgin rivers, are expertly squared off at the edges.
On the outskirts of town — "the rich neighborhood," Jensen said — are the foundations of larger estates, where settlers grew cotton, watermelons, pomegranates and cantaloupes that they sold to nearby towns and as far west as Los Angeles. Orange and cottonwood trees were planted alongside some of the streets; their stumps remain today.
In the center of town is a smattering of smaller foundations. Some of the cellars still are intact, held together by metal bow springs that were removed from buggies and fused into the concrete walls for support during construction.
Two thoroughfares slice through the settlement. One is the path of a long-defunct railroad spur. Built in 1918, the rail made regular stops at St. Thomas, introducing new goods, including blocks of ice and bottles of booze, that led to the town's brief but colorful heyday and ballooned its population from 300 to almost 500. The second was the original Highway 91, which went all the way to Los Angeles.
Remnants of the post office are here, where the last bag of mail was stamped and postmarked on June 11, 1938, then tossed in a boat for delivery as the water crept up behind Hoover Dam and through the streets of St. Thomas.
So is the foundation of stubborn Hugh Lord's house. Historians say Lord was the last holdout — refusing to believe the water would ever reach his tiny home and then, when it did, so upset that he tried to burn it down before fleeing in a rowboat.
"All of this was under water," Jensen said. "And it was 64 feet deep. Imagine how much water that is. And how much had to go away."
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