HUNT, Texas \u2014 The Hunt Store was a central meeting place for everyone in the surrounding community. With the store closing after the flood, a temporary gathering place is in the works.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were ground zero for a lot of the physical damage that was done to the area,\u201d said John Dunn, president of the Hunt Preservation Society.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sitting between the north and south forks of the Guadalupe River is Hunt, Texas. The deadly Fourth of July flooding caused damage across Kerr County \u2014 about $1 billion worth, according to Dunn \u2014 but Hunt was hit the hardest. Dunn said the Hunt Preservation Society is focusing on long-term recovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting people back in their homes, emergency and medical needs first,\u201d said Dunn. \u201cBut now we have pivoted to try to address the rest of the community needs. And a lot of it is economic revitalization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since July, Hunt organizations have received nearly $5 million in grants from the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, with $500,000 going toward building a long-term recovery center.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what the community center intended to do on a temporary basis,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cTo replace what we lost when we lost the store.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hunt Store was this town\u2019s unofficial community center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe store, everybody knows, is the heartbeat of Hunt and the center of Hunt,\u201d said Dunn. \u201cIt\u2019s the hub of all activity. So, when we lost it, we lost the community center, we lost the student center.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Preservation Society is launching its CPR program, which stands for Community Preservation and Revitalization. CPR is an avenue to get funds directly to Hunt businesses and camps in preparation for summer 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get them in their homes, but they don\u2019t have jobs and don\u2019t have an economy to support it [so] we still have another disaster,\u201d Dunn said.<\/p>\n
Dunn said that the society has been raising money since the flood to help community staples bounce back.<\/p>\n
\u201c[We] try to do some fundraising for the rest of the community assets,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cOur Hunt Store, Criders, all of our summer camps. The short-term rentals that are critical to supporting the tourists and visitors as they come in over the summer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The new community center will be for locals and visitors returning to the Hill Country once it\u2019s warm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dunn said Hunt has made progress in seven months, but those grants only scratch the surface of the needs here. He said any money donated to the Hunt Flood Recovery Fund will stay in this community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo prevent community deterioration, to ease the burden of government by doing it ourselves,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cThrough our fundraising, we\u2019re trying to do everything we can on our own to bring the Hunt community back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HUNT, Texas \u2014 The Hunt Store was a central meeting place for everyone in the surrounding community. With…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[21023,14209,132,134,133,1570,102,138,14210,223,82,26986,1659,1569,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-167548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-amber-hughes","9":"tag-app-human-interest","10":"tag-austin","11":"tag-austin-headlines","12":"tag-austin-news","13":"tag-ctv","14":"tag-dallas","15":"tag-el-paso","16":"tag-human-interest","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-san-antonio","19":"tag-texas-editors-picks","20":"tag-texas-floods","21":"tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}