When water levels fall and shorelines creep back, places that were never meant to disappear step into view again. Bell towers rise out of flat blue reservoirs, roads lead straight into cracked mud, and ruined homes sit where boats once passed overhead. These drowned towns were sacrificed for power, irrigation, and flood control, their losses framed as necessary for the greater good. When drought exposes them, the bargain feels less abstract and the past insists on being noticed.
Fabbriche di Careggine, Italy
Beneath Lake Vagli in Tuscany lies Fabbriche di Careggine, a medieval ironworking village flooded in the 1950s for a hydroelectric dam. Stone houses, narrow lanes, and the church of San Teodoro still rest on the lakebed like a paused film frame. When rare drainings or deep droughts lower the water, the village rises again, drawing crowds who walk its streets and confront the cost of erasing a community for power. For many former residents, each reappearance feels like a brief return home.
Curon Venosta, Lake Resia, Italy
Curon Venosta lives on in a single bell tower that stands in the middle of Lake Resia, its stone spire rising out of calm green water. The village was flooded around 1950 to merge two natural lakes into one reservoir, displacing families and farms. When water levels drop, foundations and pathways around the tower become visible, hinting at the streets that once wrapped around it. The scene looks like legend, but every exposed stone belongs to a very recent history of forced sacrifice.
Vilarinho da Furna, Portugal
Vilarinho da Furna, in northern Portugal, was an ancient communal village whose fields and homes vanished beneath a dam reservoir in the early 1970s. In dry years, low water reveals rooflines, doorways, and stone animal pens scattered across the exposed basin. Locals visit the ruins and tell stories of shared labor, rotating leadership, and a culture that placed community above individual gain. The broken walls feel less like abandoned rubble and more like a warning about how quickly living traditions can be drowned.
Aceredo, Alto Lindoso Reservoir, Spain
The Galician village of Aceredo was flooded in the early 1990s when the Alto Lindoso dam filled, with residents leaving before the water swallowed houses and orchards. During recent droughts, the town has reemerged almost intact, complete with crumbling bars, rusted cars, and collapsed roofs. Former villagers recognize doorways, courtyards, and shops where daily life once unfolded. Tourists now arrive to walk the muddy streets, turning Aceredo into a stark open-air exhibit on climate stress, dam politics, and long memories.
San Romà de Sau, Spain
Under the Sau reservoir in Catalonia, the old village of San Romà de Sau lies hidden except for a Romanesque church tower that often protrudes above the surface. As drought deepens and water retreats, the church walls and nearby ruins climb back into the light, surrounded by cracked mud and stranded boats. Visitors photograph arches and doorways that once stood at the heart of a thriving settlement. Each time the village returns, it underlines how modern water security often rests on submerged foundations.
Mansilla de la Sierra, Spain
Mansilla de la Sierra in La Rioja was largely abandoned when a reservoir project in the 1960s flooded the original town and shifted residents uphill. During especially dry summers, the shrinking water reveals streets, remnants of the old bridge, and outlines of the church of La Concepción. Locals and travelers walk among tree stumps and stone walls that sit where a river once flowed. The exposed ruins show how state planning, rural decline, and changing rainfall patterns all converge in a single valley.
St. Thomas, Lake Mead, United States
St. Thomas, Nevada, began as a Mormon farming settlement in the 19th century and later thrived as a small desert town. When Hoover Dam created Lake Mead, rising water gradually forced residents out and buried foundations beneath the reservoir. As prolonged drought and heavy water use drain the lake, concrete slabs, old roads, and remnants of the school and store reappear. Hikers now trace the grid of the town, seeing firsthand how Western water projects are unraveling under long-term stress.
Mormon Island, Folsom Lake, United States
Mormon Island once bustled as a Gold Rush community near present-day Sacramento, with shops, homes, and a busy cemetery. The construction of Folsom Dam in the 1950s submerged the town, leaving only memory and a few relocated graves on higher ground. During severe droughts, Folsom Lake recedes dramatically, revealing building foundations, stone walls, and scattered artifacts cast across the dry basin. The exposed landscape feels like a rough museum floor, telling a layered story of boom times, relocation, and thirsty cities.
Villa Epecuén, Argentina
Villa Epecuén in the Argentine Pampas was once a popular resort town, drawing visitors to its mineral-rich lake and sleek modern hotels. A disastrous flood in 1985, triggered by dam and levee failures, buried streets under several meters of salty water for decades. As the lake gradually receded, a skeletal landscape emerged, with white-crusted trees, broken facades, and twisted metal shining in the sun. The ruined spa town has become a powerful symbol of both human ambition and the force of water.
Potosí, Lake Uribante, Venezuela
The village of Potosí in Venezuela was intentionally flooded in the 1980s to create the Uribante reservoir for hydroelectric power. For years, only the top of its church tower hinted at the town below, a lone structure haunting the water’s surface. In periods of drought, the receding lake reveals more of the church and sections of cracked streets and walls. Images of cows grazing where waves once rolled show how quickly a man-made lake can surrender its borrowed territory.
Old Adaminaby, Lake Eucumbene, Australia
Old Adaminaby sat in the Snowy Mountains region of Australia before a vast hydro project in the 1950s moved most of the town uphill and flooded the original site. As Lake Eucumbene filled, farms, roads, and homesteads slipped underwater. When drought drives the lake to very low levels, stone chimneys, house outlines, and rusted machinery reappear at places like Braemar Bay. Residents and descendants visit the remains, treating them as both family relics and reminders of a national push to remake rivers.
