Flood of 1993: Community, Love and "Sheer Force of Will" Help Restore Farm

At about 10 p.m. on July 30, 1993, Marcia Rombach learned the efforts of herself and others to help stack up sandbags on the levee protecting Chesterfield Valley were futile. The flood waters would soon or may already have breached it.

The imminent threat sent Marcia, her husband Chip and the rest of their family racing back to their farm, which at the time spanned 800-900 acres and was already famous for its yearly pumpkin patch.

“We grabbed what we could,” Rombach said, and then they headed toward home.

This summer will mark the 20th anniversary of the flood that submerged Chesterfield Valley, known then more frequently as Gumbo Flats. What Marcia Rombach remembers most vividly about the disaster is not the moment the levee failed, but the morning after when she flicked on her TV.

“When I got up in the morning we had a house full of people,” she said. “When we the TV kicked on it was unbelievable. It was one huge lake.”

The broadcasted images showed homes, business and fields completely hidden by several feet of water and the future of all those properties seemed bleak.

The flood caused a “devastating and stressful” impact on the family's property, which sits on the west end of the Valley on Olive Road. Three homes, a barn and hundreds of acres had been plunged under water.

The houses had 20 inches of water while it rose up to 7 feet in the barn. The entire crop for the year was lost and along with it, their source of income.

And when the flood waters finally receded, they left behind a gigantic, slimy mess. The family spent days scrapping up piles and piles of river sludge and clearing fields that had been dumped full of trash, Rombach said. 

What happened next is a story that is repeated by many of the business owners and residents of Chesterfield Valley. Faced with the immense damage, the community immediately came together and began to rebuild.

Rombach said they received an outpouring of help with donations of labor and materials from organizations such as the St. Louis Family Church and the Salvation Army. The church brought down volunteers by the busload to help gut the buildings and put them back together.

“It’s all about what you can do if you all pull together,” she said. “It’s wonderful when people are willing to help you.”

Combined with their own “sheer force of will” and a love for the farm that they had spent their lives on, they were then able to replant their fields the next summer. When fall came around, the Rombach’s famous pumpkins had done more than just recover.

“The pumpkins were actually gorgeous,” Rombach said. “To me, it was the most vibrant orange. It was almost like they were glowing.”

Now, 20 years later the damage from the flood is merely a memory. With the assurance provided by a new engineering levee built to withstand a 500-year flood and assistance from a $73 million TIF, development poured into the Valley, transforming it into a bustling hub of economic activity.

Rombach's has also rebounded from that summer’s devastation, and now 20 years later, families still flock to the farm each fall to pick out pumpkins, go on hay rides and take in the scenery.

“It’s so neat to see we came back even stronger and kept building,” Marcia said.