Lake Mead, the largest water reservoir in the United States, is now at its lowest level since it was filled in 1937. That has literally brought secrets to the surface in recent months.
The reservoir of the famous Hoover Dam is located on the Colorado River, about 50 kilometers southeast of Las Vegas. The artificial lake supplies 25 million Americans with water, but the water level is very low due to the drought.
Human remains were recently found, partly in the mud on the shores of Lake Mead. This is the third body found since May. Then skippers saw a rusted barrel containing the remains of a man who had been shot dead somewhere in the mid-1970s or early 1980s with the clear signature of a mafia murder.
A week later, two sisters, paddling on the lake, came across other human remains. They initially thought they were bighorn sheep bones, but that was not true. “There’s a good chance that if the water level continues to drop, we’ll find even more human remains,” said Ray Spencer, a Las Vegas Police Lieutenant, at the time. He was right. It happened again earlier this week. The remains are still under investigation.
NASA satellite images of Lake Mead from early July 2000 and early July 2022 show how drastically the reservoir’s water level has fallen.
At the beginning of this summer, a sunken ship from the Second World War also surfaced. The vessel was once used to survey the Colorado, the river from which the water in Lake Mead originates. The water reservoir was created by the construction of the famous Hoover Dam and extends 180 kilometers behind the dam.
More and more secrets are becoming visible. For example, since 1948 a crashed B-29 plane has been lying on the bottom of Lake Mead. The aircraft will not show itself for the time being, but for the first time daylight is now reaching the aircraft underwater. In addition, when the lake was formed in the late 1930s, archaeologists were working in the area. It is therefore quite possible that archaeological finds will also surface.
Lake Mead is close to Las Vegas
The hope is that more water will return to the lake and Lake Mead will keep its secrets to itself. The outlook is bleak. The Colorado River has been battling drought for two decades, and Lake Mead’s water levels are expected to continue to fall.
The water level of the massive reservoir has fallen more than 50 feet since 1983, the year the Colorado River overflowed the dam’s emergency spillway. Excessive water usage, extreme heat, and reduced snowmelt have put a lot of strain on the Colorado River basin. Nearly 40 years later, Lake Mead has fallen to about 27 percent of its capacity.
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