Human remains recovered from Lake Mead shore, police say

The National Park Service and Metropolitan Police Department responded to a report of human remains within the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on Sunday, the agencies confirmed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Park rangers, police and the Clark County coroner’s office were dispatched to Boulder Beach, a public shoreline about 7 miles from downtown Boulder City. A spokesperson for the park service said the federal agency is still investigating the incident, but Las Vegas police are no longer involved and described it as “non-criminal.”

No other information was available on Monday. The Review-Journal filed a public records request for Metro’s official dead body report, and the coroner’s office may provide the cause of death and the identity of the person who died, if death investigators can determine those details.

This month, Lake Mead reached its lowest level on record since it was filled in the 1930s, and federal forecasters project that it will continue to set new records over the next two years. The reservoir’s combined storage with Lake Powell hasn’t been this low since 1957, according to a July study.

That’s partially because of the poorest runoff season on record this year for the Colorado River Basin, to the tune of 13 percent of normal runoff into Lake Powell. Such a meager snow year prompted the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that manages dams and water in the West, to reduce flows into Lake Mead to protect infrastructure at Lake Powell.

Lake Mead has long been thought to have human remains in its waters, something that became evident in 2022 when lake levels began to recede. The national recreation area regularly tops the annual list of deadliest sites managed by the park service, and the Review-Journal reported in 2022 that between 1937 and 1994, about 59 people were listed as missing or presumed drowned within the park boundary.

In 2022, a string of human remains turned up at Lake Mead, including those of 52-year-old Las Vegas fisherman Claude Pensinger, who officials said had disappeared in 1998.

The Clark County coroner’s office never officially identified one man’s remains from a homicide that appeared at Hemenway Harbor in 2022, though some have looked for clues by analyzing his clothing.

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.