Thistle, Utah

Thistle, Utah is located Southeast of Spanish Fork. On , April 14 1983, a massive Landslide moved part of the mountain and blocked two creeks, forming a dam. The citizens were evacuated as nearly 65,000 acre-feet (80,000,000 m³) of water from the creeks backed up, flooding and destroying the town. Thistle was unable to recover from this natural disaster; to this day it remains a ghost town.
The Thistle landslide has so far been the only federal disaster area declared in Utah and is considered the costliest single landslide in U.S. history. In addition to destroying the town, the landslide was devastating to the economy of southern and eastern Utah. Estimates placed the damage to Utah's economy at $200+ million U.S.

Being the great explores we are, Nate and I had to go check out the remains of Thistle. There really wasn't much left, but what we found was fun to explore.


This is the Mud slide (or Land slump is what I think they really called it) area.
Most of this house is submerged in a swamp so we couldn't go inside.

If we would have only thought to take a canoe.

I think this house was probably washed down into this gully. Up the hill farther there were a bunch of little cabins that were just rubble. We found a dishwasher and an old 1980s style computer.

This building use to be the Country Store.