The close-knit camp community in the Texas Hill Country will never be the same.
Early morning on the Fourth of July, record-setting flash floods swept away 27 girls at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, and washed through campgrounds where generations of young Texans have spent their summers along the Guadalupe River.
Christians across the state and the country prayed as rescue teams navigated the flooded roads Friday and Saturday to retrieve hundreds of campers in disaster areas, which had lost power, internet, and road access when water levels rose 26 feet in 45 minutes, per state officials.
By Saturday evening, at least five of the missing girls from Camp Mystic—8- and 9-year-old campers and an 18-year-old counselor—had been reported dead along with the co-owner of the Christian girls camp, Dick Eastland. On Sunday, 10 campers and a counselor remained missing.
The death toll across the area rose to over 100 people, including 28 children, with recovery efforts ongoing. One of the young victims from the camp, Sarah Marsh, is the daughter of a professor at Samford University in Birmingham, according to the school’s president, who asked for prayer for the family.
On Monday, the camp made its first official statement, saying, “Camp Mystic is grieving the loss of 27 campers and counselors following the catastrophic flooding on the Guadalupe river. Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy. We are praying for them constantly.”
The camp thanked state officials and first responders for their help as the search for the missing girls continues and asked for “continued prayers, respect and privacy for each of our families affected.”
At Camp Mystic, the cabins near the river housing the youngest campers—named Twins and Bubble Inn—took on water from both directions. Eastland rushed to rescue girls in one, and his brother Edward Eastland went to the other, directing the sleeping campers to get on the top bunks as flood levels rose higher and eventually reached the roofs.
Pictures of the aftermath inside show a tangle of wet bunk beds, girly bedding, stuffed animals, and electric fans, with dark mud covering the cabins’ red floors. Dick Eastland was found in a black SUV with three girls he had tried to save, camp staff member Craig Althaus said in The Washington Post. Althaus said he found surviving girls on cabin roofs and in trees.
Local churches called for water, food, and men with chainsaws to help the affected areas. They sent pastors to offer counsel amid anxious waiting and tearful hugs at the reunification sites set up at schools and churches.
“Sadly, today is about search and recovery, and unification of parents with children,” wrote one pastor, Joey Tombrella of First Baptist Church Kerrville. Parents just wanted to see their kids again.
In major cities in Texas, neighborhood Facebook groups and Instagram stories circulated photos of smiling elementary-age girls with their names and parents’ phone numbers—in hopes that they would be found soon and their families could finally hear confirmation of their safety.
According to news reports, most parents had only heard from Mystic by email: “We have sustained catastrophic level floods. If your daughter is not accounted for you have been notified. If you have not been personally contacted then your daughter is accounted for.” Dozens received the devastating phone call.
Camp Mystic had welcomed around 750 girls, 8 through 17, for a month-long term five days before the floods hit on Friday.
The nondenominational camp dates back to 1926 and has been run by the same family since 1939, spanning three generations. Counselors lead devotionals at breakfast and each night in the cabins. The camp holds Catholic Mass and a Vespers service each Sunday as well as a sunrise Communion service once a term, gathering at Chapel Hill, a hilltop site with a wooden cross and rows of stone benches.
“Campers and counselors join together to sing songs, listen to scripture, discover ways to grow spiritually, and learn to apply these lessons to their daily life at camp and back home,” according to a camp brochure, which quoted Psalm 121:1 (KJV): “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
Sleepaway summer camps, especially Christian camps, have proven a powerful formational tool for youth, but they’ve always depended on trust—parents have to believe that camps have staff and policies in place to keep their kids safe.
Camp Mystic has not made public statements regarding its disaster plan. Texas officials helped evacuate Mystic campers by helicopter, with some having to cross a flooded bridge holding a rope to get to safety, according to the Associated Press.
The 700-acre camp is one of several located in Central Texas, north of San Antonio and west of Austin, a hilly, lush retreat dotted with beloved camp properties. The oldest date back a century and are considered “a touchstone of Texas culture.”
Like at Camp Mystic, lower-lying cabins at Camp La Junta flooded, and some boys had to swim to safety before the camp evacuated everyone to First Presbyterian Church in Kerrville. Nearby, Camp Waldemar accounted for its campers and reunited the girls to their families by Saturday. The “Christian-oriented” Camp Stewart for Boys hadn’t yet begun its July session and experienced minimal damage.
Heart O’ the Hills, just a mile up the river from Mystic, wasn’t hosting campers this week, but the camp lodge reportedly flooded up to the third floor, and its longtime director and co-owner, Jane Ragsdale, died in the flood. Like the others, it has canceled its upcoming session due to damage.
The Laity Lodge in Leakey, Texas, still had power and didn’t suffer damage from the floods, so a camp counselor from the ecumenical Christian retreat center came to Kerrville on his day off to volunteer to help. “Knowing that it could have just as easily happened to us—I’m grateful to be here,” he told The Washington Post.
It’s not the first time the waters of the Guadalupe have threatened campers in the area. In July 1987, hundreds of Christian youth at Pot O’ Gold Ranch left on buses and in vans on the last day of Bible camp to escape the overflowing river. Of the 40 kids on the last bus, 10 died in the flash flood—at the time one of the deadliest natural disasters in the Texas Hill Country.
On the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, CT heard from some of the survivors, who remembered desperately holding on to tree limbs as the water rushed past them and asking questions about why God would let this happen to them.
Christian author and parenting expert Sissy Goff, who spent six summers at Camp Waldemar, shared her advice for parents of campers who survived the flash flood, including listening to their kids talk and giving them the chance to connect with others who shared the experience.
A mother of a 10-year-old first-time Mystic camper whose cabin was on higher ground and who was bused to a reunification center told The New York Times that her daughter sang camp songs on the drive home.
Many of these songs have been sung at Mystic since it began. One traditional song, “Morning Prayer / Camp on the Guadalupe,” calls out to God in prayer, “Father in heaven, bless us we pray. Strengthen and guide us all through the day. Comfort and keep us, Lord, in thy will. Here at Camp Mystic, be with us still.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
