Till 1930, it was a thriving town near Las Vegas. Then it got drowned. Decades later, its streets and homes keep reappearing

Ghost towns hold an irresistible pull: frozen snapshots of history, decay, and forgotten lives that fire up our imagination. There is something deeply surreal about wandering through abandoned streets where time simply stopped, offering an eerie peek into the past. While most ghost towns are reclaimed by desert dust, some meet a far stranger fate. Take the thriving 1930s settlement of St Thomas near Las Vegas. It didn't just fade away but completely vanished underwater. Decades later, as water levels shift, its drowned streets and eerie home ruins are slowly rising back to the surface, revealing a submerged mystery waiting to be explored.

As per National Park Service, when Lake Mead filled up, St Thomas, once a Mormon settlement, got inundated. Earlier, the town thrived as a stopping point between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City along the Arrowhead Trail. Today, remnants of St Thomas can now be seen thanks to Lake Mead’s low water levels, due to severe drought.

A tale of boundary blunders and back taxes

Long before it became an underwater enigma, St. Thomas was established in 1865 by Mormon pioneers. Drawn to the fertile junction where the Muddy and Virgin Rivers merged before flowing into the Colorado River, the settlers built an agricultural sanctuary. However, their geographic calculations were slightly off—they believed they were residing within the Utah or Arizona territories.


When surveys later confirmed the land actually belonged to Nevada, local tax collectors demanded five years of back taxes. Unwilling to pay, the community held a vote and chose to burn their homes, abandon their fields, and retreat back to Salt Lake City, leaving behind only one stubborn family, the Bonellis.

The fertile soil didn't stay vacant for long. By the 1880s, a new wave of homesteaders arrived, eventually expanding the population to nearly 500 residents. St. Thomas rapidly evolved into a vibrant hub complete with a school, post office, general stores, a church, a soda fountain, and auto repair garages for early motor vehicles. Though the town famously lacked electricity and indoor plumbing, former residents fondly remembered it as an era of idyllic simplicity.

From drowned relic to accessible mystery

The town's fate was sealed with the damming of the Colorado River, forcing residents out before 60 feet of water completely submerged their rooftops. Yet St. Thomas refused to stay hidden. As Lake Mead's water levels fluctuated over the decades, the settlement resurfaced in 1945, 1963, and 2012, prompting emotional reunions for former residents and their descendants.

Today, prolonged droughts have left the old western town permanently exposed once more. Situated in the northern region of Lake Mead National Recreation Area near the Overton Arm along the Muddy River, modern explorers can freely hike right through its historical footprint.

Visiting Tip: Accessing the site requires driving down a three-mile dirt road off the main route. While mostly manageable for standard passenger cars, low-clearance vehicles should travel carefully before parking to take the short walking path into the ruins.