Carstens, native of flooded town of St. Thomas, dies

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2002 | 9:07 a.m.

Irene Carstens, the matriarch of a pioneering family that settled in Southern Nevada in the 19th century, has died. She was 88.

Carstens died Thursday at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center from complications of pneumonia. She was one of the last surviving natives of St. Thomas, a community founded in 1864 and intentionally flooded in 1938 with the construction of Hoover Dam.

Services will be private.

An avid UNLV basketball fan, Carstens will be buried in the red and white University of Nevada, Las Vegas jacket she wore on trips throughout the United States to cheer on the Rebels. She was in Denver in 1990 to watch UNLV win the NCAA basketball title.

"My mother and her sisters, Mable and Bertha, loved going to the games when (Jerry) Tarkanian was the coach," said Carstens' daughter, Sharon Holmes of Las Vegas. "You'd see these three little Mormon ladies in the stands and to look at them you'd never guess they were such big UNLV sports fans."

Although she enjoyed modern sports arenas and modern travel to them, Carstens maintained her love of the simple things she enjoyed while being raised in a small, close-knit community.

"I thank God I was born and raised there (St. Thomas), and cherish all the memories I have of the town and our wonderful friends and neighbors," she wrote in an unpublished and undated memoir. "Dad used to haul ore from the (salt and borax) mines. When the bridge on the Virgin River was burned in 1925, (he) was hired to tow the cars across because of the quicksand."

Carstens was born Irene Strasser on Jan. 12, 1914, one of seven children of miner and farmer Albert Henry Strasser, who was also the town's deputy constable, and the former Lulu May McKnight. Albert was the son of Swiss-born Sebastian Strasser and Elizabeth Frehner, whose family settled in Southern Nevada in the late 1800s.

Carstens' parents settled in St. Thomas in 1910. Carstens' mother worked in the school and church and later ran a boarding house. When Carsten was young her family traveled in a horse-drawn, canvas-covered buggy and later in a Model T Ford.

Irene attended elementary school in St. Thomas and later graduated from Moapa Valley High School.

The federal government bought the family's home and land in 1932 in anticipation of the flooding of St. Thomas. She moved with her family to Las Vegas, where four generations of her family were to be born, including her two daughters.

Carstens was among 1,500 pilgrims to return to St. Thomas in 1952, when engineers at Hoover Dam intentionally lowered the level of Lake Mead to make room for an expected heavy flow of melting snow from the Rockies, thus briefly uncovering the sunken town.

Irene married Las Vegas electrician Gerald Carstens, who died 20 years ago.

She was a charter member of the Emblem Club, the women's auxiliary to the Elks.

In recent years Carstens recorded an oral history for UNLV, mostly recalling her years in St. Thomas.

In addition to her daughter Sharon Holmes, Carstens is survived by another daughter, Denise Holmes of Elko; a sister, Florence Shaw of Las Vegas; and three grandchildren.