Америкийн Нэгдсэн Улсын хамгийн том усан сан болох Мийд нуурын түвшин эрс буурснаар 1930-аад онд усанд автсан Сент-Томас суурингийн үлдэгдэл ил болж байна.
Сент-Томас хот нь 1865 онд мормончуудын суурин болон байгуулагдсан бөгөөд 1930-аад оны үед Гуверын далан барих төслийн хүрээнд зориудаар усанд автуулсан түүхтэй. Тус суурингийн сүүлчийн оршин суугч 1938 оны долдугаар сарын 11-нд гэрээ орхин явснаар уг газар бүрмөсөн усан дор орсон юм. 2000 оноос хойш баруун өмнөд бүс нутагт үргэлжилж буй ган гачигийн улмаас нуурын усны түвшин түүхэн доод хэмжээнд хүрч, 2002 оноос эхлэн хотын барилга байгууламжийн суурь, дээвэр хэсэгчлэн үзэгдэх болжээ.
Үндэсний цэцэрлэгт хүрээлэнгийн албаны мэдээлснээр, нуурын усны түвшин далайн түвшнээс дээш ойролцоогоор 1165 фут буюу 355 метрээс доош буурах үед хотын туурь ил гардаг байна. Одоогийн байдлаар нуурын усны түвшин 1039 фут орчимд байгаа нь 1930-аад оноос хойших хамгийн доод үзүүлэлт юм. Энэхүү үзэгдэл нь тус бүс нутаг дахь усны нөөцийн хомсдол болон Колорадо мөрний сав газарт тулгарч буй томоохон асуудлыг харуулах нэгэн төрлийн түүхэн үзүүлэлт болж байна.
Судлаачдын тэмдэглэснээр Сент-Томас хотын үлдэгдэл нь тухайн бүс нутгийн байгалийн болон хүний үйл ажиллагаанаас шалтгаалсан өөрчлөлтийг гэрчлэх чухал баримт болж байна. Одоогийн байдлаар тус суурингийн сургууль, зочид буудал, шуудангийн газар болон зайрмагны мухлагийн үлдэгдэл ил тод харагдаж байгаа нь бүс нутгийн усны нөөц эрс багассаныг илтгэж байна.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
↓Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
Nearly nine decades after floodwaters swallowed it whole, the Nevada town of St. Thomas is back above ground. A punishing, decades-long megadrought has pulled Lake Mead down to historic lows, and the old streets, foundations, and building frames the town left behind are once again visible in the open desert air.
The story of St. Thomas is really the story of the Colorado River itself, a waterway that has carried snowmelt some 1,450 miles from the Rockies down to the Gulf of California for millions of years before humans ever thought to tame it.
That taming began in 1909 with the river’s first dam, and it accelerated dramatically once engineers set their sights on the stretch of desert near the Nevada-Arizona border. Fifteen dams now interrupt the river’s main stem, but none looms larger, literally or symbolically, than Hoover Dam.
How the Dam Erased a Town?
St. Thomas began as a Mormon settlement in 1865, founded by pioneers who, according to Water Environment Federation, mistakenly believed they were staking a claim in Utah or Arizona rather than Nevada. Long before settlers arrived, the site had already been home to Pueblo and Basketmaker communities, and the ground itself was no stranger to flooding, having absorbed the natural rise and fall of the Colorado River for centuries.
The town’s fate was sealed in 1928, when President Calvin Coolidge signed the Boulder Canyon Project Act, setting in motion construction of what would become Hoover Dam. The dam’s entire purpose was to impound the river and create a reservoir, and St. Thomas happened to sit squarely inside the footprint that reservoir would eventually claim.
Floodwaters began creeping into the town in 1935. It took another three years before the very last holdout, a resident named Hugh Lord, finally rowed away from his house on July 11, 1938, leaving the town to the lake for good.
A Slow Reappearance, Building for Two Decades
The reemergence of St. Thomas has not been sudden, it has unfolded gradually as the Southwest’s megadrought, underway since roughly 2000, has steadily lowered Lake Mead’s surface. The first sign came in 2002, when the rooftop of the old Hannig Ice Cream Parlor broke the waterline. Since then, more and more of the town has surfaced, to the point that visitors can now walk among the remains of a school, a hotel, and a post office in addition to the ice cream parlor.
Christie Vanover, a public affairs officer for the National Park Service, described the town’s origins and its undoing in a 2015 interview with the Water Environment Federation, noting that its first residents settled the spot because of a rare water source, and, she added that:
“In the end, it was water that forced residents to flee.”
Vanover has also said the ruins tend to reappear once the lake’s level drops below roughly 1,165 feet above sea level, a threshold the region has been well past for years now.
The Historic Drop That Exposed A Forgotten Town
The scale of the drought becomes clearer in hard figures. Lake Mead’s water level currently sits at around 1,039 feet, the lowest mark recorded since the reservoir was first formed in the 1930s, and well beneath the roughly 1,165-foot line where the town starts to poke through.
That persistent shortfall has turned St. Thomas into something like an accidental drought gauge, not unlike the “hunger stones” that resurfaced in Central European riverbeds this year, historic markers once used to record and memorialize periods of scarcity.
And St. Thomas is just the most visible part of a bigger problem. Water levels along the entire Colorado River system have dropped enough to strain dam operations region-wide, turning this ghost town into a symptom rather than a curiosity. The basin remains dry for now, leaving the school, hotel, post office, and ice cream parlor exposed to open sky for the first time in generations.
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