Valmeyer, Illinois
| Valmeyer, Illinois | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
Valmeyer City Hall and Emergency Services
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| Etymology: Valley of the Meyers | |
 Location of Valmeyer in Monroe County, Illinois. |
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.svg) Location of Illinois in the United States |
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| Coordinates: 38°18′0″N 90°18′30″W / 38.30000°N 90.30833°WCoordinates: 38°18′0″N 90°18′30″W / 38.30000°N 90.30833°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Illinois |
| County | Monroe |
| Precinct | 20 |
| Founded | 1909 |
| Government | |
| • Village president | Howard Heavner |
| Area | |
| • Total | 3.47 sq mi (8.98 km2) |
| • Land | 3.41 sq mi (8.84 km2) |
| • Water | 0.06 sq mi (0.14 km2) |
| Population (2010) | |
| • Total | 1,263 |
| • Estimate (2016) | 1,256 |
| • Density | 368.22/sq mi (142.15/km2) |
| Time zone | CST (UTC−6) |
| • Summer (DST) | CDT (UTC−5) |
| ZIP Code(s) | 62295 |
| Area code(s) | 618 |
| FIPS code | 17-77265 |
| Valmeyer, Illinois | |
| Website | http://www.valmeyerillinois.com/ |
Valmeyer is a village in Monroe County in the U.S. state of Illinois, on the Mississippi River. The population was 1,263 at the 2010 census.
Valmeyer was named after a German immigrant who settled there, Val-Meyer, literally:"The valley of the Meyers". Many of his relations and descendants live in the area to this day. The original site of the village in the American Bottom floodplain was inundated by the Great Flood of 1993 of the Mississippi River. After the flood receded, the village accepted federal government assistance to relocate to higher ground about 2 miles (3.2 km) to the east atop the bluffs, on the north side of the eponymous valley.
Valmeyer's history has been marked by the periodic flooding of the Mississippi River and efforts to control it, the town having been flooded in 1910, 1943, and 1944. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Army Corps of Engineers constructed a levee system to protect the village and surrounding area. This levee system successfully protected the area from flooding for almost 50 years, even as floods occurred upstream from Valmeyer, the most significant threat having come in 1973.
It was not until the Great Flood of 1993 that the levees protecting Valmeyer and its environs were damaged by floodwater causing a large gap to form, flooding the town. Though the village was largely destroyed, the flooding of the American Bottom floodplain relieved pressure upstream from Valmeyer, and very likely saved downtown St. Louis from a major flood event. This was an intentional design element in the original levee plan, to use the sparsely populated agricultural areas surrounding Valmeyer to relieve threat against the more valuable real estate in the levee districts north of Valmeyer, including St. Louis. Valmeyer's story was well documented in both the national and international media, most notably on public television's Nova program, as a front-page article in the New York Times, and in a feature article in Smithsonian in June 1996.
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