ROCK RAPIDS, Iowa | The Rock River crests beyond 24 feet on June 16, 2014. Around 4 p.m. that afternoon, 8 inches of rain starts to fall. Flash flooding begins two hours later when Moon Creek, which pours into the Rock River on the north side of town, can no longer access the Rock, which is about to overflow its banks.
At just about that time, areas north of Rock Rapids, near Luverne, Minn., also receive 8 inches of rain. That water pours south, filling the Rock River along the way, prompting it to re-crest at 26.98 feet on June 17, far beyond its 19-foot major flood stage.
Island Park floods and closes. A neighborhood near the park evacuates. More than 80 homes sustain major damage.
Ultimately, 60 may be torn down.
Walking and driving through Island Park this June, one is struck by the saying, "What a difference a year makes."
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Island Park is green and growing again, teeming with campers and anglers hitting the rapids at the park's spillway. The Rock Rapids Swimming Pool is active on a sun-drenched Friday afternoon. Inside one of the park's facilities, organizers prepare for 300 runners participating in the 13th annual Heritage Days Run.
"We moved last year's run to the high school," organizer Emilly Austin says. "We've been here every year except for the flood last year. We're glad to be back."
City staffers and volunteers helped get Island Park, a visible and busy part of this city, up and going this spring. Heidi Freese, a camper from Sioux Falls, S.D., was delighted to pull in for a June weekend and witness members of a church youth group adding coats of paint to the playground equipment that rises on the Rock's east bank.
"We've camped at Island Park the past five years, but we couldn't last year because of the flood," says Freese, who enjoys a game of Rummikub with her husband outside their camper. "We missed being by the water last year. We couldn't canoe or float in the water. We missed the shade here, the pool here, everything."
Freese, a native of Rock Rapids, called the record flood devastating.
So does Rock Rapids Mayor Jason Chase, who notes that in addition to 10 homes already razed in the flood plain, the city is in the process of buying out another 54 homes that stand in the flood plain. The plan is to return that area to green space, thereby mitigating damage and personal danger in the event of another flood.
It's what you sometimes must do while living near a river.
Kaden Sprock knows all too well. He worked with eight others in building a wall of sandbags some 2-3 feet high between the river and his home last June. Two to three sump pumps worked at his home around the clock that weekend.
"Our basement didn't get water," says Sprock, 13.
After helping build his family's dike, Sprock joined buddy Bryce VandeWeeerd, 14, in filling sandbags for others. They were among hundreds of Rock Valley's youth doing the same.
"We loaded sandbags for eight hours," VandeWeerd says. "We kept working as the river got higher."
The Rock River's surge deposited branches and a deer at the bottom of a bridge spanning the waterway some 20 feet above the shore at Island Park, a piece of land surrounded as the Rock River divides and sends Moon Creek to the west on the north side of town.
"The deer floated to the bridge and got hung up under the bridge," says Mason Bus, 12, an everyday summer angler on the Rock. "I think the deer drowned and they ended up taking it down with a ladder."
Kade Griesse, a freshman at Central Lyon High School, remembers walking across Moon Creek in Island Park in the fall of 2013.
"You could walk across and not get your shorts wet," he says. "We turned rocks over on the shore there and caught crawdads underneath the rocks."
You can't see the rocks now as the creek rushes past, breaking up the shrieks of joy from children on the giant water slide inside the municipal pool.
You also can't see the old petting zoo at Island Park. That's because officials took the old petting zoo out as the water level rose in 2014. Chase promises a return for the attraction.
"Our plan is to make the park more flood resilient," says Chase, mayor here the past eight years. "We plan to redevelop the zoo in the existing open shelter. But, before we can do that, we have to build another shelter, one with new shower facilities and more for our campers."
The city is attempting to tackle those Island Park improvements as it works with nearly 60 homeowners. It isn't easy. Unlike a flood, it doesn't happen overnight.
Still, Heidi Freese likes what she sees.
"The park now is in way better shape than we ever thought it would be at this point," she says. "It's green, it's healthy, it's great."
Better yet? It's being used. By hundreds of people.
