St. Thomas, Nevada

We were in St. George for the week and drove down to this town called St. Thomas. It was settled by one of our ancestors, Thomas Sasson Smith. He came to Utah in 1848 & settled St. Thomas in 1865. St. Thomas is located in the Moapa Valley in Nevada (previously thought it was in AZ & UT). The Mormons had to leave the town due to the final Nevada border line that stated St. Thomas was entirely in Nevada. The Lincoln County Sheriff posted notices saying that all taxes (they had already paid to AZ & UT) were due immediately and to be paid only in gold. Because they were farmers, they didn't have access to gold, only to crops and livestock. The town was covered up in 1935 when the Hoover Dam creating backup of Lake Mead. The only thing left of the town now are the tops of the buildings. We were told that you can see them if you go into this field behind Ruby and Leah...

Anyway, we went into the field searching. We were equipped with a GPS, canteens, walkie talkies, and not much else. We ventured in and couldn't find anything (keep in mind that these plants are like seven feet tall and pretty dense AND no trail!) There were these spikes sticking up out of the ground that were super sharp. It was some kind of plant. Jonathan got one stuck in his shoe and drew blood. He had to pull it out with pliers! After a few minutes of walking through, Gavin was a little unsure about this make-your-own-trail thing, so I stuffed my camera in my pocket, hoisted him on my back and just started running through the jungle.

Sarah & Gavin in the thick of it

We were about 1/4 of the way to that mountain you see in the background in the previous pic, still finding nothing. So, we saw these 2X4s sticking up in the middle of somewhere, so we thought, 'hey, let's check that out.' Yeah, nothing there again. So, hey, let's try to go in further. Still nothing! We got to a clearing and the plants were only about five feet high at that point, so we were at least able to see where we could check next. At that point, Adam, Jonathan, & Matt continued on. Sarah, Caleb, Isaac, Gavin, and I stayed back and waited to hear what was ahead. Right about then, I remember that camera I stuffed in my pocket, yeah, it's gone! I was kinda freaking out. It's a pretty new camera and a pretty nice one, too. I couldn't imagine what to do. I was racking my brain trying to remember when I put it in my pocket and realized that I did that right in the thickest part and about an hour before. Ahhhh!!! What to do?!?!?!

We had the GPS which had tracked our trail, but it was acurate to about 6-20 feet, kind of a large range. The other problem was that we came in two different groups and of course, the GPS was with the group not with me. Since there was no real trail, we came in differently. We started back and did our best to keep around the same area. We found several tracks, but couldn't tell which were ours and which were others. Anyway, we were all praying that we could find it. Everyone split up and started searching. After about half hour of searching, I felt like things just didn't seem right, so I went about ten feet from Sarah and lo and behold, THERE IT WAS!!! It was right on the edge of a crack in the ground.

See this pic of Gavin & look at the ground for an example of what it was like...


It was crazy AND we didn't even find any ruins of the town!

We got back to where we started from and hiked back up to the cars. Adam decided to drive to the next lookout to see what was there. So, what, you ask, was there??? The trail-head to take you to the ruins of St. Thomas. It was like a 1 1/2 hour hike round trip. Lame! I think we were in the field for about 3 hours looking for something that wasn't there!! Makes for a good story and we had a good time, though. So no harm done! Here are some other pics from that outing...

Caleb & Isaac ready for an adventure...

Aaron with his 'talkie-walkie'

Stylin' Lilah

Stylin' Ruby

(Matt & Sarah in the background)

Jonathan & Ali