Las Vegas, City Under Water — St. Thomas

St. Thomas, is a ghost town near where the Muddy River flows into the Colorado River; It was abandoned as the waters of Lake Mead submerged the town in the 1930s.

The town was founded by Mormon settlers led by Thomas Smith in 1865. With a population of about 500 at its peak, St. Thomas became an established town of farms and businesses and was at one point the county seat of Pahute County. The frontier settlement is noted as the endpoint of explorer John Wesley Powell's first Colorado River expedition, the Powell Geographic Expedition of 1869.

The Mormons abandoned St. Thomas in February 1871, as a land survey shifted the state line of Nevada one degree longitude to the east, placing all of the Mormon settlements known as the Muddy Mission in Nevada instead of Arizona or Utah. The state of Nevada then attempted to collect taxes for previous years payable only in gold from the residents. They chose to leave without paying in 1871. The Mormons moved to Utah.

When the Mormons left in 1871, others claimed their abandoned properties. New Mormon settlers came to the St. Thomas and other places in the area in the 1880s.

The construction of Hoover Dam and the resulting rise in the waters of the Colorado River forced the abandonment of the town, with the last resident, Hugh Lord, leaving June 11, 1938.

The ruins of St. Thomas, which became visible after the water level in Lake Mead lowered in the 2000s, are protected by the National Park Service as a historic site.