By Mike Donahue
Moapa Valley Progress
On Saturday between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., St. Thomas, the tiny community flooded by Lake Mead in the 1930s, is going to open once again for business.
Local community members and descendants of families who settled the town have scheduled St. Thomas Alive, a community event organizers hope will breathe new life for a day back into the settlement. Everyone is invited to the affair on the actual St. Thomas townsite that lies off the North Shore Road a few miles south of Overton. A road and special parking lot have been constructed for the event.
In 1866, a contingent of some 129 LDS Church members from Utah — men, women and children — were ensconced in a tiny new community on the Muddy River they named St. Thomas.
The Mormon pioneers had been ordered by authorities under then-LDS President Brigham Young to build the settlement, which was founded in 1865, to aid in the westward expansion of the Church and the Southern Utah Mission in St. George, and as part of a network of towns erected to help provide safe passage between California and Utah, among other things.
Slowly over the next 62 years, in spite of some everyday obstacles and a few serious setbacks, St. Thomas grew and prospered. Houses were built, crops were planted. The community thrived. There were births, deaths, weddings, graduations, accidents, happiness and sadness; all the things that make a town a cohesive prosperous unit.
It was much more substantial than Las Vegas at the time and was known throughout the Southwest.
In 1869 when John Wesley Powell and his remaining crew of five floated out of Grand Wash on the Colorado River after an unbelievable rafting expedition through the Grand Canyon, the first community they visited was St. Thomas. Within 10 days that fact was flashed by telegraph across the country, forever putting the tiny community on the national map.
Eventually St. Thomas would have nearly 500 inhabitants; a busy post office; a garage for auto repairs; a two-story school house for grades first through the eighth with an auditorium on the first floor for plays and town meetings, and an ice cream shop where residents enjoyed rich, tasty treats.
The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad constructed a railroad spur into St. Thomas in 1912 and Main Street was part of the Arrowhead Highway, the first all-weather road connecting Los Angeles to Salt Lake City.
Then in 1928, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signed the Boulder Canyon Act authorizing the massive Hoover Dam and St. Thomas’s bright future was forever darkened.
In 1938, some 3,500 days after the act was signed, all the residents of St. Thomas had been evacuated and Lake Mead, the vast reservoir that formed behind the dam, drowned the homes, the school, the church, the garage and everything else that once made the town what it was. It was sad, but it was progress.
St. Thomas has peeked from Lake Mead only three times in the past 147 years, 1953-1956, 1963-1965 and from 2000 through today. Each time drought sucked more water from the huge reservoir than poured in, the stark stone foundations of the once-bustling community have been revealed. Local residents have cheered the opportunity to visit and walk among its ruins.
During this weekend’s St. Thomas Alive, actors in period costumes will conduct various vignettes on the foundation of the old school. Descendants of St. Thomas pioneers are schedule to give presentations with displays, pictures and other historical memorabilia.
