For the second time in a little over a decade, a drought so severe has hit southern Mexico that water levels have dropped 82 feet—low enough to reveal the 16th-century church at the bottom of the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir, a watershed of the Grijalva river.

According to the Associated Press, the church is believed to have been built at the behest of Friar Bartolome de la Casas, who founded the nearby monastery of Tecpatan in 1564. At the time, the region was inhabited by the Zoque people.

“The church was abandoned due the big plagues of 1773-1776,” architect Carlos Navarete told the AP.

“It was a church built thinking that this could be a great population center, but it never achieved that,” Navarrete said. “It probably never even had a dedicated priest, only receiving visits from those from Tecpatan.”

The reservoir was created when a nearby dam was completed in 1966, flooding the watershed. A previous drought, in 2002, dropped the water low enough that visitors could walk around inside the church.

“The people celebrated. They came to eat, to hang out, to do business. I sold them fried fish. They did processions around the church,” a local fisherman, Leonel Mendoza, told the AP.

Recently Mendoza has been ferrying people out to see the church’s remains.

Photo credit: AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.