Flooding Imperils Historic Buildings

The floodwaters of the Mississippi River are threatening to wash away some of the Midwest’s most treasured historic sites, left behind by explorers, pioneers and religious visionaries.

Volunteer crews from rival denominations joined to pile sandbags around one of the oldest buildings in Nauvoo, Ill.: the Old Nauvoo House across the street from the homestead and grave of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. The homestead is on slightly higher ground.

The Old Nauvoo House, originally planned in 1841 as a 300-bed hotel, now houses staff at the Joseph Smith Historic Center of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Volunteers from the Independence, Mo.-based church were joined by crews from the Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has its own historic sites a short distance north of Nauvoo, but on higher ground.

The denominations split after Smith’s murder at Carthage, Ill., in 1844, and the Utah sect is called the Mormon Church.

More sandbagging went on 125 miles downriver at Elsah, Ill., where about half the 851 residents are members of another American-born religion, Christian Science. The volunteers were trying to save a number of antebellum houses. Some pre-Civil War buildings were lost last week.

In Ste. Genevieve, Mo., the oldest European settlement in that state, efforts were under way to save 18th- and early 19th-Century buildings that include examples of the distinctive vertical-log construction of French Colonial architecture. The town was founded by French settlers in 1735.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation listed Ste. Genevieve last month as one of the most endangered historic places in the country, citing inadequate flood protection.

Even if efforts to save those historic sites succeed, places of lesser note may be lost.

Residents of tiny Pattonsburg, Mo., were holding out little hope that the town would survive.

“It doesn’t look good,” said Sharman Hoover, owner of Maggie’s Memories, a downtown shop that was chest-deep in water last week. “We’re a farming community, so we’ve been just hanging on for the last few years anyway.”

The Grand River and two creeks last week inundated the northwest Missouri town of 500 with up to five feet of water.

Owner Robert Rader said The Corner Grocery Store could not reopen.

“We’re done,” Rader said. “We can’t afford to go anymore. In fact, my house is only a couple blocks from here, and I lost everything there too.

“The only thing left for me to do is spend a week or so to salvage what’s left, then leave to find a job. It was a nice little town, but I’m out of here.”