My wife has friends who used to live there. Wasn't that the town they government picked up and moved to higher ground?
I believe that was Valmeyer, that was actually moved up onto a high bank, and there are some diehards living on the banks of the river still.
The Gov't did offer to buy out the plots of people living in Niota, and some agreed to that.
At the time of the flood, some inmates from Stateville in Joliet (what I call the Charm School) were trucked down to help shore up the levy at Niota in early July. Everyone in town was impressed by the industry and friendliness to the townspeople of these inmates (I'm sure they only let out the most sociable ones!) They worked very hard on this project, and the townspeople were very encouraging, giving them snacks of homemade pies, cookies, sandwiches, etc.
But on my birthday, July 10, 1993, the levy, despite all the hard work of everyone involved, finally gave way under the force of all the water in the river (thank Army Corp of Engineers for that blunder - they ordained NO dredging that year of the Mississippi around Illinois) and the town of Niota was flooded. My grandparents' place was flooded as well, water over 6 feet deep in the basement, but not as bad as the folks in town who had water up into the first floors.
When my brother and I went there to video the damage, we found, besides the flooded basement damage, and the killed tulip trees, strange plants growing in all the lawn and over much of the cultivated fields - must have been seeds carried along with the flood. These were plants we'd never seen before: strange feathery weeds, odd low-leafed plants, and all of them WEBBED WITH WHITE FUNGUS. It was really icky, and such a sad thing to see on my grandparents' old farm! My cousin Linda, on an earlier visit, opened a cabinet door near the garage exit and found a huge blacksnake (harmless, but it totally creeped out her daughter!).
My grandparents' name was Baxter. They started out with an orchard (apples, plums, and peaches) 1920s-1930s and also grew strawberries. There were a couple of cherry trees and a small vinyard - those were for family use. Grandpa was a descendant of Emil Baxter who founded the Baxter vinyards in Nauvoo, IL, and it is still in existance today.
In the late 1970s, they decided to pull out the orchard and plant corn, wheat, and soybeans (I was sad when that happened, an end of an era) but it was probably more economical for them. Better stop now, or I'll bore you with the whole debacle of family bickering after their deaths AND the flood!!!