California’s Shasta Dam flooded Kennett, a copper-mining town beneath Lake Shasta

Before Shasta Lake covered the landscape of northern California, the Sacramento River valley was home to a mining town shaped by copper, railroads and the industries that followed them.Its name was Kennett; the town grew from a railroad construction camp into an important mining community in Shasta County. Copper mines helped drive its economy, while rail connections and industrial works tied Kennett to the wider region.Then came one of the largest engineering projects in California's history. The federal government began building Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River as part of the Central Valley Project, an enormous water-management scheme intended to store water, support irrigation, control floods and provide hydroelectric power. The dam eventually transformed the valley, but it also erased Kennett from the landscape.Water storage in the newly created Lake Shasta began in February 1944. As the reservoir filled, Kennett disappeared beneath it.Today, the town survives largely through historical records, photographs and the industrial remains documented before the reservoir covered the valley.Kennett grew with California's mining and railroad boomThe landscape around present-day Shast...