This is the second in an occasional series where we’ll be travelling to some of the world’s most interesting abandoned places.

Fuelled by the ancient myth of the lost continent of Atlantis, underwater cities have always been the subject of much fascination.

Of course in real life small towns and villages are sometimes subsumed beneath changing bodies of water, but somewhat surprisingly, Google’s imagery has managed to capture at least three underwater towns which were all handily above water at the time.¹

St. Thomas, Nevada

Back in 1871, the small town of St. Thomas, Nevada (Wikipedia) was first abandoned by the Mormons, after a shift in the state line severely altered their tax liability.

The people who claimed the empty properties would eventually be forced to leave themselves, thanks to the construction of the Hoover Dam and the creation of Lake Mead, which even today is the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the United States.

The Hoover Dam was completed in 1935, and just three years later the last resident of St. Thomas was forced to leave by the rising waters of Lake Mead. Here we can still see the outline of the town’s school, which like several other properties becomes visible when the reservoir is low.

Adaminaby, Australia

Adaminaby (Wikipedia) is a town near Australia’s Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, which has the distinction of being one of the highest towns in Australia², and a very popular place from which to take fishing trips to nearby Lake Eucumbene.

On Street View we can see The Big Trout that graces the town centre in recognition of fishing’s importance here.

This is strange though, as it was the creation of Lake Eucumbene that forced all of the residents to have to abandon the original town…

In April 2007 the ongoing drought³ in this region brought the water level so low that Old Adaminaby began to re-appear, 50 years after it had been flooded as part of the Snowy Mountains Scheme hydro-electricity project.

Unfortunately the structures themselves are only faintly visible from up here, but elsewhere on the shores are other more prominent ruins that are also becoming exposed.

(Try turning on the photos option on Google Maps to see lots of great ground-level photos from the Panaramio Google Earth layer.)

Epecuén, Argentina

In contrast to these tales of towns being submerged in the name of progress, sometimes nature just takes its course. From about 1920 the water level of Argentina’s lake Epecuén rose steadily, and in 1978 the locals put earth and stone defences in place to try and protect their village.

These defences held back the water until November 10th 1985, when it finally broke through and flooded the village four metres deep. Here we can see the various buildings jutting from the surface of the lake.

Judging by the number of photographs available online, it seems that Epecuén is a popular destination for photographers, so there’s loads of ground-level photo sets to see – including this rather nice one on Flickr.

Thanks to Claude Warren and kjfitz.

We’ve explored many castles in the past on Google Sightseeing – whether large, illegal or remote – but there are many more diminutive castles out there worth exploring.

Nunney Castle in Somerset may be historic, but is barely larger than many houses in the village that surrounds it.

Broadway Tower in Worcestershire may be tall, but it’s only large enough for one room on each of its three floors.

Burg Rabenstein is one of Germany’s smallest castles, again barely larger than nearby houses.

While an Englishman’s home may be his castle – that’s literally true for the residents of this home in Georgia, which is slightly less venerable than the castles mentioned above.

Constructed from local granite and marble, at around 140 square metres the castle is actually a fairly modest size compared to most suburban residences constructed these days.

The Street View car passed by under gloomy skies, giving the castle a brooding air as would befit a rather more historic castle in the old world.

No self-respecting castle would be complete without a moat, and here it even opens up into a swimming pool behind the house, visible on Live Maps. There’s even something resembling a gate house (which I assume is actually a pool house), and the whole property is also bordered by a suitably impressive fence.

There are tiny castles all over the world – let us know of any in your area!

Thanks to Alex Makarishev and Dennis.

The Futuro House is a round, prefabricated house that was designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in 1968. About 100 of the kits were erected around the world, and you’d know if you saw one – because they look exactly like perfect little flying saucers from some 50s B-movie.

Royse City Fututo, one of three surviving in Texas

Built from fibreglass-reinforced polyester-plastic, Futuros are around 4 metres high by 8 metres across, and have super-cool airplane-style hatch entrances.

Waterside Futuro in Berlin, Germany

Suuronen’s aim was actually to design a ski-cabin¹, one that would be “quick to heat and easy to construct in rough terrain”, and in this respect he succeeded – a Futuro House can be placed on virtually any terrain, requiring only four concrete supports, and thanks to the integrated polyurethane insulation and electric heating system, even in the most extreme conditions it only takes around thirty minutes to achieve a comfortable temperature inside.

Futuro as part of the Canberra Space Dome & Observatory, Australia

Despite the obvious awesomeness of these UFO-shaped homes, by the mid 70s they had been withdrawn from sale – although this was mainly due to the 1973 oil crisis, which had sent the price of plastic skyrocketing.

Front and back of the Pensacola Beach Futuro House, Florida²

Around sixty of the original Futuros have been accounted for over the years, but there are still many that remain undiscovered. The most complete archive is at futuro-house.net (there’s another with an embedded map at archinform.net), but it seems to have been left to stagnate for a number of years – perhaps Google Earth will provide the means for all of the missing Futuros to be rediscovered?

Double Futuro House, Franklin, Ohio

It should also be pointed out that the moulds for making Futuros apparently still exist… about time for a revival don’t you think?

Futuro in Covington, Kentucky

Here’s an article that includes a floor plan, some images of a Futuro being helicoptered into position, as well as some great shots of people inside.

There’s some odd sightings on the ocean floor, thanks to the much-improved ocean surface depth images that were added to Google Earth and Maps last week!

Reader aliosha was browsing the atlantic and discovered a bizarre grid pattern in the deep.

About 150 km square, it presumably isn’t a natural occurrence, but what else could create such a pattern it what must be extremely-deep water?

Even more bizarre, off the coast of Indonesia is what would easily be the largest writing on the planet. At around 130 km wide, it would dwarf second place by a factor of about 30x.

Unfortunately, it is only the largest writing on Google Earth, as this message doesn’t actually exist.

It says “DTS/SIO”, and was added by David T. Sandwell (DTS), a professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO).

The sea bed imagery comes from a variety of bathymetry sources, including the SIO, and Mr Sandwell added the false underwater canyons so that they could see where the SIO’s data was being used.

Thanks to aliosha and GEarth Blog (who also have news of a special event Google are hosting next week in relation to oceans on Google Earth).

Our first post from Kyrgyzstan is evidence of alien visitation to Earth!

While skeptics may dismiss this as some image artifact or tape used to hold different images together, the presence of an image ghost (previously explained on Google Sightseeing) give definitive proof that this has to be an airborne object of unearthly origin.

What’s more it leaves a some kind of vapour trail for more than 90km over Lake Issyk Kul, while its companion craft is found to the south east, just about to pass over the lake.

Thanks to Ryan Bowman and SpongeJim.