Photo above: View through the canyons at Lake Mead NRA. Right: View of Callville Bay at Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Source: National Park Service.

Lake Mead Then

Original inhabitants were the Anasazi and the Basketmakers in the Lost City prior to European settlement and that famous wrong turn. For the town of St. Thomas was born from thinking the Mormom settlers who poured into the area had found Utah, but they had not. The Mormon group stopped within the NRA boundary in a fertile valley of the Muddy and Virgin Rivers in 1865. They thought they were in Utah, were eventually discovered by Nevada officials who required five years back taxes, burned down their homes, and moved to Salt Lake City. Other settlers arrived in the 1880's, rebuilt the town, and eventually St. Thomas rose in population to five hundred people. This time, their fate would be in the hands of the federal government, not state officials with taxes to collect. In 1928, President Coolidge signed the authorization for the building of Hoover (Bounder) Dam, which would flood the town. They had seven years to leave before the town would start to flood, sinking sixty feet below the lake. Today, as in several droughts in the past, St. Thomas is dry and able to be visited. Guess you can't keep a good, even wrong turn town, down.

Photo above: Residents/scavengers making a trip back to the town of St. Thomas as Lake Mead overtakes the buildings, June 1938. Photo courtesy National Park Service. Below: One of the many hiking trails at Lake Mead NRA. Source: National Park Service.

Lake Mead Now

It's been a lake since the 1930's after the announcement and construction of Boulder Dam, now Hoover Dam. Now there's recreation galore, campgrounds all over the place, hiking trails aplenty, horseback trails, and yes, all that water to wander around, ski atop, fish within, or just play around. You can rent your boat or bring your own. Be careful and obey all the rules of the park so you can enjoy your trip. Yes, there's lots of them.

It's one hundred and forty miles long split into two lakes, Mead and Mohave and desert steaming at its edge for all of that shoreline. If full, it's the largest reservoir in the United States, although it has not been full since 1983. Lake Mead has only been known by that name since 1964, prior to that it was Boulder Dam Recreation Area since its inception in 1936. Of course, prior to that park's founding, this was a settlement known in the northern area of the park as the town of St. Thomas, now a ghost town due to the flooding.

If viewing history is part of any tour you take, you can even go back to St. Thomas and try to reconstruct the vision of those ruins into a vibrant town. And a jaunty sidetrip over to the Hoover Dam itself can be a real treat.

For most of its seven million visitor each year, Lake Mead National Recreation Area is a variety of water based fun only thirty minutes from Las Vegas, although the overlap of visitors seeking this recreation after a nightclub visit to see Terry Fader is likely low. Oh, maybe not. But if you're in this vicinity of the United States, head over to the park created by the need for electricity and water for desert city residents. View the lake from above or around it and enjoy the days in safe fun spent in the hot Nevada sun.