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Look Back: Demise of Times Beach
Date: 12/3/2010 Album ID: 1128346
Photos by Post-Dispatch photographers
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In the fall of 1982, Times Beach residents learned that oil used to spray the town’s many dirt lanes had been laced with dioxin, a toxin deadly to animals, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began taking samples. On Dec. 6, 1982, the Meramec River crested 24 feet above flood stage, and the one-two punch of dioxin and floodwater sealed Times Beach's fate. It was never occupied again.
The Mississippi River rises onto the Arch grounds on Dec. 5, 1982, swollen by torrential rains that dumped more than 10 inches of rain in some parts of Missouri and Illinois. The river crested downtown nine feet over flood stage -- noteworthy, but nothing like the record set 11 years later on Aug. 1, 1993, when the river reached almost 20 feet over flood downtown. The big news in December 1982 was along the tributaries, such as the Cuivre River north of St. Louis and the Black River in southern Missouri. Along the Meramec River, a record crest swamped parts of Pacific, Eureka, Valley Park and Arnold, and helped bring about the end of Times Beach, a bottomland town downriver from Eureka that was founded in the 1920s by the former St. Louis Times newspaper as a weekend retreat of cottages. (Larry Williams/Post-Dispatch)
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Volunteers fill sandbags on Dec. 4, 1982, on Virginia Avenue in the city's Cardonelet neighborhood. The rising Mississippi was backing into the River Des Peres and threatening homes along its banks. After the 1993 flood, the River Des Peres levees were improved and some low-lying homes in Carondelet and Lemay were bought out. (Larry Williams/Post-Dispatch
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Water pours over the dam at Lake Saint Louis on Dec. 4, 1982. Many parts of eastern Missouri received five to 10 or more inches of rain over five days. (Karen Elshout/Post-Dispatch)
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Flooding in Valley Park on Dec. 6, 1982, the day of the record crest there at 39.73 feet, or almost 24 feet over flood stage. Rescue workers in boats worked amidst flooded homes the night before to rescue stranded people. The flood wiped out some neighborhoods close to the river, and Valley Park eventually won federal approval for a new levee protecting it from the river's periodic rages. (Post-Dispatch)
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Pacific, Mo., on Dec. 6, 1982, the day of the Meramec's record crest there as well. The river reached 18.6 feet over flood stage and covered almost all of the town south of the Burlington Northern line to Springfield, Mo. (Gary Bohn/Post-Dispatch)
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Coast Guard personnel and volunteer helpers rescue a woman by boat from the second floor of her home in Valley Park on Dec. 6. (Ted Dargan/Post-Dispatch)
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Curtains billow from Bolt's IGA Supermarket in Valley Park on Dec. 6. Workers had stacked wares on high shelves, but the water reached them. (Wayne Crosslin/Post-Dispatch)
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Rescuers search for stranded people in Valley Park on Dec. 6. (Wayne Crosslin/Post-Dispatch)
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A woman peers from her second-floor window in Valley Park on Dec. 6. She decided to stay in her home. (Wayne Crosslin/Post-Dispatch)
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Refugees from Valley Park land along the Missouri Pacific (now Union Pacific) tracks running through town on Dec. 6. (Wayne Crosslin/Post-Dispatch)
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The Meramec River fills the Fenton bottomlands south of Interstate 44 on Dec. 6. (Robert LaRouche/Post-Dispatch)
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Bill Brotherton helps a family in Arnold move household goods as the Meremac rose into a subdivision on Dec. 6, the day the river crested there as well. Only the Great Flood of 1993 pushed the Meramec higher in Arnold, at the river's confluence with the Mississippi. (Ted Dargan/Post-Dispatch)
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The Meramec River floods Interstate 44 and its frontage road at Missouri 141 south of Valley Park on Dec. 6. (Robert LaRouche/Post-Dispatch)
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Melvin Nunnery (right) of Valley Park and his family take refuge as a VFW hall near Ballwin on the evening of Dec. 6. They had fled their home the day before. (Karen Elshout/Post-Dispatch)
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Judy Baldwin (left) helps her mother, Arline Jackson, save a few items from the Jackson's flooded mobile home in Eureka on Dec. 8, after the river had receded. (Wayne Crosslin/Post-Dispatch)
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The Valley Park Board of Aldermen meet on Dec. 8 in a bank on Missouri 141 uphill from their flooded town. The City Hall was damaged by the flood. (Karen Elshout/Post-Dispatch)
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The Meramec washed these mobile homes from Eureka into a creek bed beneath Interstate 44. The flood had receded when this picture was taken on Dec. 14. (Sam Leone/Post-Dispatch)
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Some of the wreckage along Aspen Drive in Times Beach as of Dec. 22. (Robert LaRouche/Post-Dispatch)
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Dennis Ensz (left), of Crawford, Miss., and Stanley Unruh of Brookville, Miss., work on a damaged home in Times Beach on Dec. 22. They were members of Christian Disaster Relief. But after the federal government confirmed that Times Beach's dirt lanes had been sprayed with oil contaminated by dioxin, the government eventually bought all the properties of the town. It now is a state park. (Robert Larouche/Post-Dispatch)
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Becky Dyle, 8, of Times Beach, picks out a toy during a Christmas party for flood victims on Dec. 22 at the Times Beach city hall, one of the few buildings that could be used after the flood. (Gary Bohn/Post-Dispatch)
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