LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Another piece of Lake Mead history is emerging from the once deep waters near Hemenway Harbor and Lake Mead Marina. A WWII-era Higgins landing craft is almost halfway out of the water less than a mile from the current marinas.

The boat has been known to many for decades and has been a popular diving site, once 185 feet below the surface of the lake.

The boat was recently photographed by the YouTube channel called “The Other Me.”

When this Higgins craft was built, used, and sunk is unclear at this time. But according to Las Vegas Scuba, the boat was used to survey the Colorado River, then sold to a marina, and then sunk. This could date the boat back to the early 1940s.

  • Higgins boat begins to emerge from Lake Mead. (Image: YouTube – The Other Me)
  • Higgins boat begins to emerge from Lake Mead. (Image: YouTube – The Other Me)
  • Higgins boat begins to emerge from Lake Mead. (Image: YouTube – The Other Me)

Higgins landing craft was built for the military between 1942 to 1945. New Orleans was home to Higgins Industries, a small boat company owned by entrepreneur Andrew J. Higgins. His company produced the historic landing craft used during the D-Day invasion, but also made several versions of the landing craft, including a torpedo boat.

  • WWII Higgins landing craft (Photo: US Navy)
  • Higgins landing craft (Photo: US Navy)

“Andrew Higgins is the man who won the war for us,” President Dwight D. Eisenhower said during a 1964 interview. “If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel), we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different.”

NEW ORLEANS – (Clockwise from far left) Joel Madere, Ed Daroca, Bruce Harris and George Benedetto take a newly-restored Higgins LCP(L) boat out for a test run June 12 in the Industrial Canal, New Orleans. The four men, along with numerous other volunteers, spent thousands of hours restoring the Higgins boat to 85 percent of its original condition as part of a restoration project for the National D-day Museum in New Orleans. The boat’s hull number (P10-21) was dedicated in memory of Coast Guard Signalman Douglas Munro who lost his life rescuing a battalion of Marines trapped by enemy Japanese forces at Point Cruz, Guadalcanal, Sept. 27, 1942. U.S. Coast Guard photograph by Petty Officer 3rd Class Nick Cangemi

8 News Now has reached out to the National Park Service for further information on the boat.