Flood Risk in Monroe County, Illinois: Why Valmeyer Moved Its Whole Town

The 1993 flood: 16 feet of water for months

During the Great Flood of 1993, the Mississippi River overtopped the levee protecting Valmeyer, a Monroe County village in the American Bottom floodplain. Water reportedly reached roughly 16 feet deep and sat there for months, submerging nearly the entire town and substantially damaging more than 200 homes. It was one of the most severe single-town flood events of that historic flood season across the Upper Midwest.

The decision to move -- and how it happened

Rather than rebuild on the same floodplain ground, Valmeyer's residents chose to relocate the entire village. Using FEMA and State of Illinois buyout funding, the village bought out roughly 300 homes and 25 businesses on the flooded site and moved the townsite about two miles east, onto bluff land reported at more than 300 feet above the original floodplain elevation. It took about a year and a half after the flood before the first residents could move into new homes, and building the new town reportedly cost around $35 million.

The move changed the town's size along the way -- Valmeyer's population exceeded 900 before the flood and settled at roughly 500-600 afterward, as not every property owner relocated. FEMA has cited Valmeyer's relocation as a model buyout case study for other flood-prone communities, and journalists returning to the story years later (CNN in 2019, STLPR in 2013) have both described it as a lasting example of retreat from floodplain risk rather than repeated rebuilding in place.

What's left on the old site, and what's still in the floodplain

The original Valmeyer townsite in the American Bottom still exists physically -- a street grid, a park, and other vestiges of the pre-1993 town remain, even though most of the buildings are gone. The new Valmeyer, built on the bluff, is the town's active center today. Separately, Fults -- Monroe County's smallest incorporated village -- still sits within the Mississippi floodplain, and levee infrastructure including the Fish Lake Drainage and Levee District No. 8 continues to protect other low-lying county land along the river.

None of this means every Monroe County parcel carries flood risk -- the county runs from river bottomland up onto bluffs and beyond into ordinary upland farm country. But it does mean the western part of the county, closer to the river, deserves a genuinely careful flood-history check rather than an assumption based on the county's overall rural character.

What to check before buying

Start with a current FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM) lookup for the specific parcel, which shows whether it sits in a mapped Special Flood Hazard Area and what that means for federally backed mortgage flood-insurance requirements. For bottomland parcels near the river, ask Monroe County's Zoning & Building department directly whether the parcel or its access road has any documented flood or levee-failure history -- Valmeyer's story shows that local institutional memory here can be specific and well-informed even beyond what a FEMA map alone captures.

If construction is planned within a mapped floodway rather than just a flood-hazard area, a floodway construction permit from IDNR's Office of Water Resources may be required in addition to any county building permit -- a state-level permit distinct from FEMA flood insurance and from county zoning. See our national flood-zones guide for the broader FEMA/NFIP framework this fits into.