I’ve been thinking about towns submerged by reservoirs. I don’t know why that suddenly came to mind or why it fascinated me without prompting. It’s one of those things.
This is also a topic that interests many other people apparently. They’ve written all sorts of definitive lists of underwater ghost towns. I won’t replicate those definitive works. One can review them later if interested. It’s a surprisingly common phenomenon. People need water. Towns are flooded. I’ll simply provide a few examples spread across the globe that I’ve explored via satellite.
Let’s get the obvious one out of the way first, an instance of scale so incredibly audacious that it cannot escape unmentioned.
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It’s difficult to even conceive of a situation where nearly 1.25 million people had to relocate. That happened in the years leading up to 2008 because of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtzee River in China. To put that in perspective, that’s like compelling everyone in Rhode Island or everyone within the city limits of Birmingham, England, or everyone in Adelaide, Australia to pack up and move to a new home.
SOURCE: Valley_Guy on Flickr via Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) license
I’ve been impressed by Old Adaminaby in New South Wales, Australia which was submerged below the waters of Lake Eucumbene in 1957. The town moved nearby to higher ground before the waters inundated lower-lying areas (map). The only remnants left behind were a few ruins that rise above the waters periodically during protracted droughts.
The Internet believes that the most significant example in the United States involved four towns in Massachusetts submerged by the Quabbin Reservoir (map). I base that solely on the fact that this seemed to be the most common result whenever I consulted the major search engines. Four towns that had been around since the late Eighteen or early Nineteenth Century (Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott) were all flooded behind the Winsor Dam and Goodnough Dike by 1939.
Bluffton, Texas rises again
merindab on Flickr via Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) license
I’m more partial to Bluffton, Texas, though. Like the example from Australia, the original Bluffton townsite rose from the dead during a recent drought. Ordinarily it rested beneath the placid waters of Lake Buchanan, a reservoir along the Colorado River of Texas, where its been submerged since the late 1930′s (map).
I guess I’m a sucker for those towns that are drowned, only to claw their way back into the visible world in zombie-like fashion when waters recede. I could probably write an entire article based entirely on submerged towns that have reappeared because of recent droughts. There are several others in the United States that I found with minimal searching: Monument City, Indiana (included news video); Corydon, Pennsylvania; and Los Arboles, New Mexico all rose from their watery graves, along with townsites in many other parts of the world.
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Let’s feature an example from Russia because loyal reader "January First-of-May" hails from there and has had to endure so may articles on 12MC focused on just about every location other than Russia. Here you go, January First-of-May. This one’s for you.
Mologa in the Yaroslavl Oblast was flooded in the 1940′s as a result of the creation of the Rybinsk Reservoir at the confluence of Mologa and Volga Rivers. Allegedly 130,000 people lived in Mologa and had to be relocated, while about three hundred residents refused to leave and drowned. Joseph Stalin didn’t mess around.
Oddly enough, Google Maps actually labeled the ghost town. Even thought its underwater. Even though it hasn’t existed since the 1940′s.
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I haven’t forgotten about the United Kingdom either. There are plenty of examples in the UK, too. How about Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire? The little English villages of Ashopton, Derwent Woodlands Church and Derwent Hall all found themselves on the wrong side of the dam and succumbed to the waves in 1944. In Wales, Capel Celyn disappeared too, thanks to the Llyn Celyn Reservoir (map).
The list goes on and on.
It often seems to start with the simplest of questions before turning hopelessly complex. What’s the deepest lake? That doesn’t sound too difficult. It’s straight-forward. It seems to beg an easy answer, and it even provides one. Sort-of. Maximum depth or mean depth? Does it have to poke above the surface? What if it’s covered by ice or rock?
See what I mean?
Lake Baikal
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Maybe it’s not that difficult. Let’s consult Wikipedia’s List of lakes by depth. Russia’s Lake Baikal has both the greatest maximum depth (1,637 metres / 5,369 feet) and mean depth (758 m / 2,487 ft).
Baikal conceals an inordinate amount of superlatives within its immense size. Not only is it the world’s deepest lake by both common measurements, it also contains on the order of 20% of the earth’s non-frozen fresh water. Notice the shape which is typical of a rift valley. These are formed along faults in the earth’s crust where land splits to create a deep crack. Baikal filled with water and resulted in a 636 kilometre (395 mile) lake.
Case closed. We can all call it a day and get on with our lives. Lake Baikal answers my deepest lake question simply and elegantly. Everything would have been fine if I’d stopped right there, but longtime Twelve Mile Circle readers know that I’m unable to leave well enough alone.
Lake Tanganyika
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Actually, Lake Tanganyika — the second deepest — was pretty straightforward once I decided to ditch mean depth (otherwise it would have been Lake Pinatubo in the Philippines) and stick with maximum depth. I also decided arbitrarily that if the maximum depth wasn’t 1000 metres or more then it wasn’t worth my attention.
Lake Tanganyika is another rift lake. It’s not quite as deep as Baikal at "only" 1,470 m / 4,823 ft., although it’s longer, stretching 673 km (418 mi). That enough to make it the longest freshwater lake in the world. Lake Tanganyika is also rather international with waters falling into the territory of Burundi, DR Congo, Tanzania and Zambia.
I’m amazed by another feature: the huge variety of cichlid fish that have evolved within the lake over multiple millenia. Lake Tanganyika features prominently in the study of evolution. You may have seen the cichlids featured on the Mutant Planet series on the Science Channel not too long ago.
Caspian Sea
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Now things start to take a more unusual turn. The Caspian Sea. Is it a sea or is it a lake? Even the experts can’t seem to make up their minds because it seems a little of both. If it’s a lake then the Caspian is the third deepest at 1,025 m / 3,363 ft. Certainly, it’s the largest fully-enclosed body of water on earth (disregarding man-made canals that connect it to other bodies of water). It was once part of the Paratethys Ocean until about 5.5 million years ago, and it even has a vestigial continental shelf. Thus, while it has some extremely deep spots it also has a lot of area that are more shallow. Sea? Lake? Feel free to select one on your own.
Lake Vostok
Radar Satellite via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain
It gets downright freaky with Lake Vostok in Antarctica. I had to purloin a public domain radar satellite image just to demonstrate its outline because Lake Vostok sits under nearly 4,000 metres of ice. Feel free to check it out on a map although its not very impressive with nothing but white.
Beneath that ice shield, Lake Vostok (which is liquid) is believed to reach a maximum depth of something approaching 1,000 m / 3,300 ft beyond the ice, which is simply crazy. The water laid undisturbed for millions of years until Russian scientists drilled-down and punctured the surface in February 2012. Nobody is quite sure what will they will discover as they probe water samples and perhaps send down robot vehicles. It’s theorized that Vostok could serve as a proxy for planets or moons with similarly ice-covered bodies of water. Could it hint at how life might evolve in extraterrestrial locations?
Best One I’ll Likely See Anytime Soon
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The best that the United States can offer is Crater Lake in Oregon in 10th place, at 594 m / 1,949 feet at its deepest point (albeit #4 for mean depth). I realize that’s far short of 1,000 m but I have a hope of seeing this one in person.
Crater Lake is the remnant of a collapsed volcano so it’s a caldera filled with water. The old Mount Mazama once existed on this spot before its violent destruction nearly eight thousand years ago in a series of volcanic eruptions. Interestingly, no rivers or streams fill or drain Crater Lake. It’s maintained entirely by rain and snowfall, an interesting balance of precipitation and evaporation creating beautiful blue waters.
I will be there this summer!
