Video narration
How would it feel to watch your hometown street disappear beneath water? That happened in Nevada-but St. Thomas was no legend. Mormon settlers built it in the nineteenth century, and it became a working community. Then a change in the territorial boundary sparked a dispute: should residents pay taxes to Nevada? The argument emptied St. Thomas once before. But the town did not simply fade away. It was resettled. Then Hoover Dam changed everything. Lake Mead rose behind the dam and deliberately flooded the town. Residents evacuated. Streets and homes disappeared beneath the reservoir. That was the second vanishing-and the deliberate one. When drought lowers Lake Mead, ruins can emerge once again, like a memory breaking the surface. So how does a real town vanish? St. Thomas was abandoned, rebuilt, and finally submerged beneath Lake Mead, while maps kept its name.