In a spot where party barges and speedboats once frolicked, Americans now wander the heat-ravaged West, searching for buried treasure in a shrinking Lake Mead.
Over the past two decades, Lake Mead, the nation's largest reservoir, has dropped 180 feet and is now less than 30 percent full, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
U.S. officials are expected to declare the first-ever water shortage from a river that serves 40 million people in the West, triggering cuts to some Arizona farmers next year amid a gripping drought.
