Camp Mystic is shown on the south fork of the Guadalupe River as clean-up crews begin to salvage what they can after a devastating flash flood overwhelmed the property in Hunt, about 18 miles southwest of Kerrville, on July 4, 2025.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
The south fork of the Guadalupe River appears murky while campers’ belongings, such as blankets and footlockers, are shown next to buildings damaged by a devastating flash flood at Camp Mystic in Hunt, about 18 miles southwest of Kerrville. The disaster killed 25 children, two counselors and one of the camp’s owners at the Texas Hill Country retreat on July 4, 2025.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
Standing left to right, Camp Mystic Guadalupe River directors Mary Liz and Edward Eastland, attorney Britt Eastland and Camp Mystic owner and executive director Willetta “Tweety” Eastland appeared in a state district court in Austin earlier this year. Numerous parents filed five lawsuits against the camp and several members of the Eastland family seeking millions of dollars in damages for their children’s deaths in the July 4, 2025 flash flood.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Camp Mystic co-owner and co-executive director Tweety Eastland, center, listens at a state district court hearing in Austin earlier this year that focused on whether a temporary restraining order should be enacted against the Texas Hill Country retreat. A catastrophic flash flood killed 25 children and two counselors at Camp Mystic on July 4, 2025, along with Eastland’s husband, Richard “Dick” Eastland, 70, another owner and executive director of the camp.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Before Camp Mystic abandoned plans to reopen part of its grounds this summer, the Texas Department of State Health Services received more than 900 letters and emails from people who felt moved to weigh in on whether the agency should grant the century-old retreat a license to operate.
The state health department — which was conducting a by-the-book administrative review of the camp’s application — didn’t ask anybody to write in. It didn’t seek public testimony. It wasn’t staging town halls.
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But the possibility of the Hill Country camp resuming business a year after a flood killed 25 children and two counselors stirred strong emotions among its critics and supporters.
In one letter, a woman whose niece died in the flood at Camp Mystic begged state health officials not to allow it to reopen.
“There is no way to fully understand what this has done to our family and the 25 other families who lost girls that day,” wrote Colorado resident Maggie Stevens, the aunt of the late Mary Barrett Stevens, 8, of Austin. “A bomb has gone off, and every day we discover a new piece of our lives that has been destroyed by the shrapnel caused by the death of our beloved May May.”
In another letter, an Austin man whose daughter attended Camp Mystic for years expressed approval for its plans to reopen part of the retreat that didn’t flood during last year’s disaster. And he praised the family that owns and operates the camp.
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“I have come to know three generations of the Eastland family and have found all to be honorable individuals,” Rob Frazer wrote in February. “I have trusted Camp Mystic with the life of my daughter and took great solace in the joy and safety she derived from her summers there.”
The camp and the Eastland family had sought to reopen its newer Cypress Lake campus this summer, which didn’t flood when a torrential thunderstorm hammered Kerr County in the early morning hours of July 4, 2025, dumping up to 15 inches of rain in several hours.
The older Camp Mystic Guadalupe River campus, where the 27 victims and one of the owners died as high waters overwhelmed the site, remains closed under a court injunction that temporarily prohibits its use for camp operations. The injunction was put in place after the parents of most of the children killed filed five lawsuits against the camp, several members of the Eastland family and other parties, accusing them of wrongful death and gross negligence.
But the camp’s owners withdrew their license application April 30 after two days of emotionally wrenching hearings in front of a joint investigative state legislative committee, where grieving parents vented their fury and Texas lawmakers vowed to shut down the business.
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Those who sent letters included family and friends of victims, survivors’ relatives, parents whose children had camped there previously, former counselors, physicians, a teacher, a trauma historian, other children and at least one relative of the Eastlands.
However, such letters have no influence on the state health department’s decision on whether to grant a license, spokesman Chris Van Deusen said. Those decisions, he added, are based solely on whether a camp meets the criteria for a license — nothing else.
Still, Van Deusen said messages from people against granting Camp Mystic a license outnumbered those in favor of reopening the retreat.
The San Antonio Express-News submitted an open records request in mid-March seeking copies of the letters and emails, and received 178 of them. The newspaper didn’t get the complete collection of messages because it filed its request before the state license application deadline.
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Most of the letters and emails it reviewed — 165 — were opposed to granting Camp Mystic a state license.
Haunted by ‘what ifs’
One Houston physician who described herself as a mother and a concerned citizen asked the state to defer Camp Mystic’s license renewal until authorities had completed their investigation into the disaster.
Dr. Diana Crabtree Sokol noted the medical profession has protocols spelling out how to respond to crises.
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“In medicine we prepare for the rare emergencies and have emergency plans in place,” Crabtree Sokol wrote. “Rare floods can have the same protocols so camps and campers know what to do to prevent loss of life. I urge you to not make these young girls’ deaths into a footnote, but into a moment where we take time to learn and prevent future loss of life.”
Another mother wrote that prior to the disaster, her daughter was slated to stay in the Bubble Inn cabin during a camp session later in the summer of 2025 — a decision that now distresses her. When the flood struck, every camper and both counselors bunking in Bubble Inn was killed.
“I spent months debating whether to send her (to) second or third term,” Houston resident Kelli Lilienstern wrote to the state health department. “By the grace of God, I chose third term … The ‘what ifs’ haunt me every day. What if I had chosen second term? My daughter would be dead.
“It is inconceivable that Camp Mystic could have its license renewed while lawsuits, investigations and unanswered questions remain,” Lilienstern noted. “Renewing their license now would be a profit‑driven decision that disregards the magnitude of this tragedy and the families forever changed by it.”
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Camp Mystic and the Eastlands drew blistering rebukes and scathing criticism after testimony in a state district court in Austin revealed they did not act on warnings of approaching bad weather, lacked a written evacuation plan and delayed efforts to move campers from cabins in low-lying areas as the floodwaters rose rapidly.
The public fury intensified when Mary Liz Eastland, a nurse who served as the camp’s chief health officer and a director of the Camp Mystic Guadalupe River campus, testified that she took her children and evacuated their home on the camp’s property, but did not call 911. Her mother-in-law, Willetta “Tweety” Eastland, an owner and executive director of the Camp Mystic enterprise, also fled her house on the property without calling 911.
Tweety Eastland’s husband, Camp Mystic owner and executive director Richard “Dick” Eastland, 70, was killed when his Chevrolet Tahoe was overtaken by more than 20 feet of water as he tried to evacuate children stranded at the Bubble Inn cabin. All 13 children and two young adult counselors from that cabin jumped into his vehicle and died with him.
A Houston child psychiatrist who said two of her 8-year-old daughter’s classmates died in the flood also implored state health officials to deny Camp Mystic a license until investigations into the disaster are completed, the camp meets state standards and “trustworthy leadership” is put in charge of the business.
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“From both a professional and personal standpoint, it is unconscionable to me that Mystic’s license would be renewed when it remains under investigation, when a child’s body is still missing and when incompetent leadership persists,” said Dr. Lauren Havel, who described herself as a friend of many bereaved parents.
Havel was referring to Cile Steward, 8, of Austin, the only Camp Mystic flooding victim whose body has not been found. Searchers have been trying to find Steward’s remains for more than a year.
Many of the letters that opposed granting Camp Mystic a license mentioned Steward, noting the retreat should not reopen while her whereabouts are unknown.
“As a lifelong friend of CiCi and Will Steward, I have witnessed an unfathomable level of anguish,” wrote Austin resident Sarah Hsu, referring to the child’s parents. “Given the ongoing criminal investigations and the systemic failure to protect Heaven’s 27, Camp Mystic, I believe, has forfeited its privilege to operate.”
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Heaven’s 27 refers to the 25 children and two counselors killed at the camp. Relatives and friends of the victims have embraced the name.
The Texas Rangers are conducting what Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick described earlier this year as a “criminal investigation” into what happened at Camp Mystic. In April, the Texas Rangers disclosed they were assisting the state health department by looking into complaints that accused the camp of negligence.
“Reopening the site of such a recent tragedy is not only a gross display of myopic self-interest but a direct emotional assault on a community seeking to heal,” Hsu wrote.
The lawsuits filed by victims’ parents seek to hold Tweety Eastland, Mary Liz Eastland and Edward Eastland personally liable for the deaths, along with Dick Eastland’s estate, which is represented by his son, attorney Britt Eastland.
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Edward Eastland, another director of the camp’s Guadalupe River campus and one of Dick and Tweety Eastland’s sons, waded through high water to reach the Twins I and II cabins, where children and counselors were trapped. He was eventually overtaken by the flood and washed away, but made it to land. Eleven children from the Twins cabins died, along with another child who had gone back to the Jumble House cabin to retrieve one of her belongings.
‘This remarkable place’
A letter from a historian who said she has studied the social, political and cultural impacts of trauma and tragedy in America’s past — and how such incidents are memorialized where they occurred — argued it was necessary to pause Camp Mystic’s operations to properly remember and honor the victims.
“Camp Mystic is a graveyard and should be treated as such,” wrote Dr. Adrienne Chudzinski, who teaches history at Stanford Online High School, founded by Stanford University in California. “Memorialization of hallowed ground takes time; five years in the case of the Oklahoma City bombing, 10 years for both the World Trade Center in NYC and for the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, 15 years for the crash site of United Flight 93 in Shanksville.
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“In spaces where there were both child victims and survivors, as with Sandy Hook Elementary School and Robb Elementary in Uvalde, the buildings were (or will be) demolished to honor the deceased and decrease traumatic reminders of the event for the surviving members of the community,” she noted.
Chudzinski said such places demand recognition of “the rupture” created by the catastrophic loss of life that occurred there.
“A pause — for one, five, 10 or even more years — is necessary to allow time and space for remembrance, reflection and finally memorialization,” she wrote. “To continue operations as normal is to deny the enduring devastation caused (by) the Eastland family’s failure to act.”
Some letters to the state health department voiced support for Camp Mystic’s desire to reopen its undamaged Cypress Lake campus this summer.
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“This site is outside of the 100-year floodplain and no water reached any of the cabins,” wrote Hunt resident Kathy C. Ragsdale, who is the camp matriarch of another well-known Hill Country retreat, Camp Stewart. “There is no reason that I can see, outside of social media pressure, for Mystic to be denied operation.”
Ragsdale noted her two daughters attended 22 terms at Camp Mystic more than 50 years ago.
Tweety Eastland’s sister also wrote a letter of support to the Texas Department of State Health Services in February, though she did not mention she was related to one of the owners.
“The owners and directors of this prestigious institution have taken every step in enhancing security systems for all in attendance,” wrote Dallas resident Patricia A. Harloe, who is Eastland’s older sister. “Mystic owners/directors have gone above and beyond state requirements to install four state-of-the-art flood warning river monitors from River Sentry at Camp Mystic Cypress Lake before the start of the 2026 camp season.”
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Harloe noted that she is a former Camp Mystic camper and that her daughter attended the retreat throughout her childhood. She also said her granddaughters and nieces attended as well.
“After all these years of going back and forth to this remarkable place — either as a camper or mother and grandmother of campers, I will drive through those green gates and suddenly feel a sense of serenity, calm and a flood of faith — if this is not church, then I do not understand what is,” Harloe wrote. “I have always felt it should be called Camp Magic.
“I implore you to support this institution with all its implemented safeguards … It is crucial that we continue its mission.”
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