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Camp Mystic, a long-running private Christian girls’ summer camp where 27 girls and counselors died in Texas flooding on the Fourth of July, will reopen next year, according to the camp’s operators.
The reopening will take place in conjunction with the camp’s 100th anniversary and one year after the deadly flash floods that swept through the facility along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County this summer.
The summer camp made the announcement on Monday in an email to families enrolled in the 2025 camp. Some families have criticized the camp over its safety measures and preparedness in the wake of the tragedy.
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Clothes, trunks and personal belongings from Camp Mystic campers are strewn outside a flood-damaged dormitory in the wake of the July 2025 flooding. (REUTERS/Umit Bektas)
Leaders said they will reopen Camp Mystic Cypress Lake, a sister site opened in 2020 that was not destroyed by the flood. The original campus, which is located along the Guadalupe River and suffered “devastating damage,” will remain closed and is not expected to reopen next year, officials added.
“As we work to finalize plans, we will do so in a way that is mindful of those we have lost,” the letter said, according to The Associated Press.
The owners said they will be designing and building a memorial “dedicated to the lives of the campers and counselors lost on July 4th,” according to ABC News.
“We hope this space will serve as a place of reflection and remembrance of these beautiful girls,” the camp’s statement read. “We continue to pray for the grieving families and all those who lost loved ones.”
The letter also said leaders are working with engineers and other experts to determine how the camp will implement safety changes required under newly passed state bills.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Camp Mystic for comment.
Debris litters the entrance of Camp Mystic’s riverfront lodge after devastating flash floods swept through the Texas girls’ summer camp on July 4, 2025. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)
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The news has drawn a mixed reaction: some family members of the deceased strongly oppose the planned reopening, while alumni and the Eastland family, who own the property, have expressed support.
Cici Steward, whose 8-year-old daughter, Cile, remains missing, said, “The truth is, Camp Mystic failed our daughters.”
“For my family, these months have felt like an eternity. For the camp, it seems like nothing more than a brief pause before business as usual,” she said in a statement Tuesday to The New York Times. “Camp Mystic is pressing ahead with reopening, even if it means inviting girls to swim in the same river that may potentially still hold my daughter’s body.”
Other parents said they had received almost no other communication from the camp in the months after the flood, then were suddenly notified by email that Mystic planned to reopen.
Blake Bonner, whose 9-year-old daughter, Lila, died in the flooding, told the Times that the families were not consulted about, and did not approve, the memorial the camp announced.
Rescue crews patrol the Guadalupe River near the heavily damaged Camp Mystic campus in Kerr County, Texas. The river rose more than 15 feet in an hour. (REUTERS/Sergio Flores)
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The campers and counselors were killed when the fast-rising floodwaters roared through a low-lying area of the summer camp before dawn on July 4, 2025.
The destructive flooding killed at least 136 people in the region, prompting widespread criticism of local preparedness.
County leaders were asleep or out of town, the AP reported. The head of Camp Mystic had been tracking the weather beforehand, but it’s unclear whether he saw an urgent warning from the National Weather Service that had triggered an emergency alert to phones in the area, a spokesperson for the camp’s operators said in the immediate aftermath.
The camp, established in 1926, did not evacuate and was hit hard when the river rose from 14 feet to 29.5 feet within 60 minutes.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
