A sunken boat revealed by the depths of Lake Shasta sparked a mystery this week: How did a World War II landing craft end up in a California lake?
On Sunday, Shasta-Trinity National Forest posted on social media that they’d found a boat once used on the USS Monrovia, a storied troop transport vessel that saw action in Europe and the Pacific. As Shasta Lake receded in the worsening drought, the boat emerged from the depths. But no one was quite sure how it ended up there.
Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader, there may be an answer of sorts. After the story published on SFGATE, Bay Area reader Tom Ruppel emailed with his find. “Check out the Redding Record-Searchlight of Feb. 15, 1969,” Ruppel wrote. “There’s a story and photo spread of USFS workers clearing debris from Shasta Lake using these vessels. There are a couple of pictures of the craft, but I couldn’t make out any hull numbers. My money’s on that.”
A trip into the archives unearthed the story in question. The Record Searchlight story highlights the work of Forest Service employees who dredged the lake after winter storms. “To make the lake clear and safe for summer vacationers is the task of ‘Operation Clean Sweep’ of the U.S. Forest Service,” the article reads. Using two boats, they dragged a net through the water, catching “floating logs, railroad ties, fence posts and other flotsam.”
“A falling-crew cut down the snags from the deck of a former military landing craft that the Forest Service uses to carry men, materials and smaller pieces of equipment such as D-6 tractors around the lake,” the story reported. One photo caption, accompanying an image that looks much like the mystery boat, reads: “A World War II LCM [landing craft mechanized] is used to fall snags when the water is low.”
According to news coverage, when the USS Monrovia was decommissioned in 1968, the Navy sold the ship for scrap. It’s not out of the question that another government entity — the Forest Service — scooped up the discounted boats. The timeline also works, as the Monrovia was scrapped in late 1968 and the Record Searchlight story ran in February 1969.
Shasta-Trinity National Forest spokesperson Ruth Esperance told us it was “hard to say” whether the boat seen in the 1969 article is their sunken ship, but did confirm similar craft were used by Forest Service workers.
“I was told today by one of our employees that we did and still do have a boat similar that we use to haul items around the lake to care for Forest Service facilities,” Esperance emailed. “Ours however was metal and not wood.”
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