American Veterans Post 153 Mokane was an outpost Thursday - a peninsula surrounded on three sides by sandbags and a plastic-covered concrete wall, that with the help of pumps seemed to be holding back the Missouri River that lapped at the edges of Broad Street in downtown Mokane.
The post's finance officer Dale Laughlin said 30-40 people had been out during the day Thursday, and maybe close to 50 on Wednesday, to help sandbag - to defend the fortification around the building that has been in place since May 21.
Laughlin didn't know for sure when the river had beaten the levee meant to protect Mokane.
The City of Mokane posted to its Facebook page Wednesday afternoon that rising waters had overtopped the levee in several places.
Just to the southwest of Post 153, at the corner with Fulton Avenue, water had surrounded the pumps at the Fast Lane gas station. Across the street, the local post office was another building protected by sandbags.
"We don't know what to expect of that," Robert Spencer said back at Post 153 of more water expected to come down the Missouri from the Osage River in the coming days, when Ameren Missouri is expected to open the spill gates at Bagnell Dam.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also continues to release 75,000 cubic feet per second from Gavins Point Dam on the Missouri - more than twice the average for this time of year.
As Spencer sat for a moment in a chair in a shaded part of the deck that wraps around one side of Post 153, people carted two-wheeled dollies by, each loaded with a few sandbags at a time to add to the top of the makeshift wall around the building.
Spencer said he's a past commander of the post, and Laughlin's uncle.
Laughlin's daughter, Mary Anne Fritz - a member of the post's ladies auxiliary unit - said she's been helping every time there's been sandbagging over the past two weeks.
Spencer, who said he's lived in Mokane since 1965, said the river's been higher before, and so far, everything inside the post has stayed dry.
The power was on at the building Thursday, and a couple of gamblers played at screens near the front door inside.
Not everything in town has gone on as normal; Spencer said the Mokane Bar & Grill - next to the post office, with water at its front door on Fulton Avenue - has had to shut down, and the post office has moved to the local fire station.
Whenever the few feet of water on the northeast side of the post recedes - back down from over Mokane Lions Club Park, the Mokane Trailhead of the Katy Trail and the river bottoms, back to a mile from where Spencer said it was on Thursday - he said "you pray for a good hard rain" to wash out all the mud and sand that will surely be left behind.
Callaway County commissioners declared a state of emergency for the county Thursday evening.
"The water is coming up in Mokane and things are getting worse, not better," presiding commissioner Gary Jungermann said.
Water topped the levee at Steedman early Thursday, and nearly 30 county roads were impassable due to flooding by the afternoon.
Jungermann said most locations in the county are still accessible, but lengthy detours may be necessary.
"Declaring an emergency allows us to be in discussions with FEMA moving forward," he said. "We may not have enough damage that FEMA will want to get involved, but if we don't declare, we won't even be in those discussions."
The Missouri River upstream at Jefferson City remained a little above 33 feet Thursday. The river was still forecast by the National Weather Service to be above 32 feet at 6 p.m. today.