By Mike Donahue

Moapa Valley Progress

Kenna Dalley, right, directs youth actors rehearsing for the St. Thomas Alive event including, from left, L’Rysa McMurray, Pamela Mecham, Dallin Watkins, Jackson Mortensen, JannaLee Weatherford and Whitney Wickersham. Photo by Mike Donahue.

Some 50 actors — kids, teens and adults — have been rehearsing for weeks to give voice next month to former residents of St. Thomas, the once bustling town drowned beneath Lake Mead in the 1930s.

The actors, under the direction of Kenna Dalley, Moapa Valley Empowerment High School (MVHS) drama teacher, are scheduled to enact some seven scenes and/or vignettes based on the history of St. Thomas and its residents who were forced to relocate after the completion of Hoover Dam.

The cast, ranging in age from 6 to 60, will perform in “St. Thomas Alive,” a planned event on the deserted townsite which includes a handcart trek from Moapa Valley by youth in the LDS Logandale Stake on March 2-3. Organizers said the event is designed to help descendants of St. Thomas residents as well as current Moapa Valley citizens reconnect with, or at least understand, some of the history of the local area.

Dalley’s actors are scheduled to perform two scenes on the handcart trail and the remaining five in St. Thomas during “St. Thomas Alive” March 3.

The small community of St. Thomas, about 8 miles south of Moapa Valley along the Muddy River, was a bustling community established by Mormon pioneers in 1865. By the turn of the 20th Century it was one of the largest towns in Southern Nevada, much more substantial than nearby Las Vegas.

By the 1920s, however, residents knew the city’s days were numbered when the government decided to construct Hoover Dam to control the wild and destructive Colorado River that annually caused millions of dollars in damage downstream. The government eventually bought out every home and business in town, although some people remained for several years.

Hoover Dam was completed in 1935 and water began lapping at St. Thomas doorsteps in 1938. It was the only major town affected by the rising waters of Lake Mead which are fed by the Colorado, Virgin and Muddy rivers.

Foundations and other St. Thomas artifacts were revealed early this century when the ongoing 10-year-plus drought shrank Lake Mead to less than half its capacity. It was the third time the foundations were made visible by low lake levels.

Dalley said scenes or vignettes planned for “St. Thomas Alive” will be conducted on the foundation of the town’s school, a structure that accommodated first through eighth grades.

“The school had two stories with an auditorium downstairs and classrooms upstairs,” she said. “We’ll be acting in just about the exact location that this type of thing would have been done in the actual town – the auditorium and town meeting place.”

One planned scene is from a play written about St. Thomas by Dalley’s father, Ron Dalley entitled “One for the Money.” The others are from histories written by former St. Thomas residents including Ruth Chadburn Calland, Emeline Davis Vaughan Huntsman, Berkeley Lloyd Bunker and Mara Rae Sprague.

The histories were originally printed in “Muddy Valley Reflections, 145 Years of Settlement,” published by Beezy Tobiasson and Georgia Hall in 2010.

Dalley said local author/writer Melanie Gifford turned the histories into narratives, which Dalley has restructured into scenes.

“My vision is to ‘show’ the story and histories of the people, much more so than just ‘telling’ the story,” Dalley said.

She said some of the actors are actual descendants of former residents and “it’s really been an amazing experience for them.”