The floodwaters had receded from parts of Geneva Street on Tuesday, but left behind were two big piles of sand, some unfilled sandbags and a smell "like a rotten fish."
"It's receded, but of course, your backyard's ruined," Geneva Street resident April Young said.
As of Tuesday night, the National Weather Service in St. Louis reported the Missouri River had dropped to 27.8 feet in Jefferson City. The forecast called for the river to possibly go below flood stage of 23 feet June 28.
The brown grass of backyards on the east side of Geneva Street is coated with mud and debris like logs that floated in and have been left behind by the flood of Missouri River backwater.
Young said the rotten fish smell has gotten better, but "everything's just rotted back there."
She's lived on the street for two years and said the sandbags were placed to protect the basement of the home she rents before the water came up.
Another layer of sandbags placed later and a sump pump also helped, but "it was just coming in so fast" that some water did get into the basement.
She said the landlord does have flood insurance.
"We're lucky with good neighbors," she said of having people who helped each other sandbag.
"It was really a nice community effort," John Moody said of neighbors helping to sandbag. Moody sat Tuesday evening on a front porch a couple homes down from Young, with family members Chelsea and Stephan Dyson.
The Dysons only recently moved into their home - after the floodwaters had already risen - but they also have flood insurance, because they were told they live in an area where they should have it.
Chelsea said the floodwater in the basement soaked the carpet and got up to about 3 inches deep.
Megan Wrigley-Johnson said she's lived at her home next door to the Dysons for three years, and the carpet in the basement was pulled up before the water came up in preparation for the flood; friends and family helped sandbag.
Wrigley-Johnson said her dad was a county commissioner during the Flood of 1993 - which inundated homes on Geneva Street with an even greater depth of water - so they had an idea of what to expect with this flood.
Even so, she said her family had to leave their rented home for about a week and a half at one point during this year's flood because the water had damaged the air conditioning unit.
The water in the family's backyard got to be about 4 feet deep, judging by a high-water mark on a tree and how high she said the water had gotten in relation to other things in the yard.
She said the wall paneling in the basement was damaged to about halfway up, and she lost a box of family photos, among other damage caused by the knee-deep water downstairs. But she admitted there was "minimal damage, for what it could have been."