The ruins of a California town built during the California Gold Rush have re-emerged above the water at Folsom Lake.

The stone walls and foundations that made up part of the town of Mormon Island were visible on Monday.

Mark White, of Sacramento, hiked to the site near Brown’s Ravine and used his camera to capture some of the most striking images so far of the California drought.

“You don’t get to see this very often. Thank God!” White said.
Scattered among the ruins are rusty nails, pieces of pottery and other artifacts that belonged to the 2,500 people who lived in the Mormon Island in the mid-1850s.

“Some of the pottery we found you could tell was like a vase or like a clay pot, just be the shape of it,” said Janet Dyer, of Citrus Heights.
Signs warn visitors not to disturb the site and not to take anything.

However, Dyer said she noticed that a license plate she had seen at the site the last time the water was this low was missing.
“Hopefully, it’s in a history museum somewhere and not on somebody’s shelf,” she said.

The surface of the lake was at 364 feet above level on Monday.
That is 7 feet above last year’s low point of 357 feet and 17 feet higher than the all-time record low of 347 set in 1977.

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