A small town had to make way for the Hoover Dam.
National Park Service
In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill ordering the construction of what would become the Hoover Dam. It was completed in 1936, causing the Colorado River to start rising.
As water pooled in valleys, Lake Mead began to form. Unfortunately for the residents of St. Thomas, Nevada, they were right in its path.
Mormons settled the town in 1865, though most burned their homes and moved after a dispute over taxes, according to the National Park Service. By the 1880s, newcomers had found the town, which would eventually become home to around 500 people.
When the river water started flooding, the town had everything from a school to a post office to an ice cream shop.
In 1838, the last resident escaped by boat.
“St. Thomas, for a long time, you couldn’t get to without scuba diving,” Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor, told The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2019.
The drought changed that.
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