I'd been to Folsom Lake many times – kayaked the water, walked the perimeter – and couldn't reconcile this new image with the one I'd always known.

I tried to imagine the valley as it looked then – oaks and storefronts set along a slender twist of river. In 1853 the town, the center of which now lay 70 feet underwater, boasted 2,500 people, seven saloons, four hotels and one of the richest mines of the gold rush.

And walking among the boneyard of this bygone time, I found it suddenly easier to admit the impermanence of our own era, much the way that the death of a friend can remind us of our own mortality.Ī lady dressed like a pioneer explained the history of Mormon Island. People lingered, reverent, gazing into the open casket of the lake floor. To the west, the neighborhoods of Sacramento sprawled across the flatlands where, before the dam was built, the river flooded each spring.Ĭlouds spread low over the lake, their reflection silvering the water, and the scene grew reminiscent of a funeral. Mostly, people stood quiet.Ībove the lake, the sun winked off the windows of mini-mansions, a ring of green circling each house.

I can't believe everyone's excited about a pile of rocks, one grumbled. Mom, he asked, is this the buried treasure? Two teenagers sat on a stump. I ran my palm against the stone wall each rock puzzled into the next as if manufactured to fit. Artifacts sightseers plucked from the silt – authentic or not – were stacked atop rocks, ordaining the landscape like a series of altars: Here, the curl of a steel spring, one stirrup buckle, a plastic hair clip. The place had become a sort of participatory archaeological dig. But I found only square nails and old hinges, fragments of walls, a patch of floor. I searched the landscape, devouring the scene as if somewhere among the ruins of this extinct town, something important waited to be revealed. In the distance I glimpsed a first remnant of Mormon Island – a stone wall. Soon, the detritus of modern times began to emerge: two outboard motors, Budweiser bottles, a baseball hat. We walked past the floating docks, settled into the dry lake bottom like bricks into mortar. Now, as the lake level dropped, the remains of the old town slunk back to the surface.įolsom Lake lay 10 miles downriver from my farm, and my father and I had driven down to see the ruins. In 1955, when Folsom Dam was built to create California's ninth-largest reservoir, the lake flooded a historic gold-mining town called Mormon Island. The water level had already reached a record low, falling lower each rainless day. The lake was a clenched fist, its fingers forced inward by the drought.

Underwater ghost town missouri river