Drive east from Las Vegas towards the Nevada Arizona border.

The winding highway will carry you past the desert's burnt orange cliffs to the top

of the Hoover Dam.

The view stretches out for miles.

But one thing dominates the landscape, it's the impossibly blue waters of America's largest

reservoir, Lake Mead.

It's dusk now, and some of the sky is blue, but on one side it's got kind of a yellow

wheat orangey glow.

And the defining feature of Lake Mead these days is this bathtub ring, this like thick

strip of white that is more than a hundred feet tall that kind of shows people where the

water level used to be and it's this really stark visual manifestation of the drought

that has gripped the region for more than 20 years now.

Erin Braun is the economist's west coast correspondent and a frequent visitor to Lake Mead.

As it recedes, it's laid bare stories about climate, urban development and energy.

But last May, the lake revealed something else.

It was an old metal barrel, caked with mud, it had been underwater for decades and some

pieces had rusted away just enough to see what was inside.

It was a human body, bones were sticking out, almost like the corpse was trying to crawl

to shore.

This wasn't a boating accident or a drowning.

The body, later named Hemmanway Harba Doe after the place where he was found, had been

shot to death.

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