‘We’re Evacuating … Valley Junction’s Under Water’: Watch Great Flood of 1993 Video

On July 10, 1993, Valley Junction became part of the Raccoon River when a levee broke and floodwaters swamped the historic and cultural district, the original West Des Moines.

No one had ever seen a flood of such proportions in Valley Junction, accustomed though the area was to flooding of both minor and major proportions. This was epic, in the Des Moines metropolitan area and throughout the Midwest.

Valley Junction was on the tip of the first metropolitan area in the Midwest to endure misery that would last for much of the summer in the Great Flood of 1993.

In today’s look back, A-Okay Antiques owner Steve Mumma recalls cutting short his vacation in the Ozarks and literally racing back, driving faster the farther north he got as the magnitude of the disaster began to reveal itself.

“We’re evacuating,” his new employee Peggy Perkins had told him in a series of phone calls throughout a tense day. “... Valley Junction’s under water.”

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