When Lake Mead last plunged to record-low water levels in 2022, its dramatically receding shoreline revealed all manner of curiosities.
For the first time in years, the sun shone on the gutted frame of a World War II-era vessel. Water retracted from the abandoned wreck of a houseboat. Dozens of sunken skiffs and speedboats, long written off by their owners, sat dry on the sand.
But in time, much graver secrets also emerged.
On a bright May morning that year, a scream rang out along the reservoir’s popular beach spot, Hemenway Harbor. A visitor had stumbled across a metal barrel so corroded by time that she could see the decomposed remains of a man who had been sealed inside, his bones still wrapped in battered jeans, Velcro sneakers and a silver Timex watch.
Wooden pallets mark the location of where a barrel was found containing a human body in Lake Mead on May 1, 2022. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images/File
