This family has run Camp Mystic for three generations. For the first time in decades, it won’t open
By Andy Rose, CNN
(CNN) — It was hard to believe there was anything left that could surprise the tight-knit group of women who had attended Camp Mystic, one of the most beloved summer programs for girls in Texas.
After enduring nearly 10 months with the heartache of disastrous flooding that killed 28 people at the camp – 25 campers, two counselors and the camp’s director, Dick Eastland – days of hearings resulted in an unexpected decision by Camp Mystic’s leaders.
“Just the incomprehensible devastation that this place of pure joy and laughter and innocence has been the focus of this horrible tragedy,” said Claudia Sullivan, who first came to Camp Mystic in 1964 and became friends with Eastland and his wife long before they, and eventually their extended family, were running the camp.
For months, the surviving Eastland family members have made the survival of the camp their top priority, insisting it could continue this summer on higher ground and with more safety precautions.
In response, they have faced a completely different deluge – investigations, lawsuits, criticism and concern it was too soon to move on.
Thursday, camp leaders announced an end to their pursuit of a new license for now, marking the first time in a century the campground will spend a summer unoccupied.
“No administrative process or summer season should move forward while families continue to grieve, while investigations continue and while so many Texans still carry the pain of last July’s tragedy,” the Eastland family said in a statement announcing their decision to halt the 2026 summer season.
The announcement is a fork in the road for a Texas institution and also the family whose name has become inseparable from the camp for three generations.
“Our special bond with our Camp Mystic families does not change or end with the announcement,” the family statement said. The Eastlands did not say whether they intend to restart Camp Mystic next year, and representatives for the family did not respond to a request for more information about their plans.
Even after deaths, Camp Mystic had high demand
The camp’s official brochure didn’t list prices or even how to apply. There was no need. Camp Mystic was constantly at capacity with a waitlist so backed up, many hopeful parents applied shortly after their girls were born.
“This was, you know, wives telling their new husbands that if we have a daughter, she’ll go to Mystic,” said Casey Garrett, an investigator hired by the Texas House committee investigating the flood response. “It was a known thing. It was a very traditional culture.”
Alumnae included the daughters of multiple Texas governors and former president Lyndon B. Johnson, a Lone Star State icon in his own right. Laura Welch was a counselor at Camp Mystic decades before she became better known as first lady Laura Bush.
Until Thursday’s decision to cancel camp, more than 800 girls were still signed up to be part of a scaled-down Mystic experience this summer, the Eastlands said.
Plans for a centennial celebration with hundreds of former campers in Kerr County last month fell apart in the wake of the tragedy, Sullivan told CNN. Instead, about 18 people came together in a reunion that still had joy and memories but couldn’t avoid being overshadowed by uncertainty.
“It was a little more somber,” she said. “Each one talked about their personal pain and their worry about what will happen not only to the Eastlands, but to camp.”
A family business became a Texas institution
This was supposed to be a year of celebration – the 100th anniversary of the founding of Camp Mystic. The Eastland family’s connection to the camp – nestled alongside the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill County – predates World War II. Dick Eastland’s grandmother, Agnes, became a director in 1934, and she and her husband William Gillespie Stacy bought it five years later, according to the camp’s official history.
“Ag and Pop,” as they were known, expanded Camp Mystic’s size and schedule, seeking to turn the mostly well-to-do young campers into a mirror image of Ag herself – privileged, but fiercely independent.
“The give and take of camp life tends to offset overindulgence at home,” said an early camp brochure, according to Texas Monthly.
As Ag and family friend Inez Harrison, who helped run the camp after Pop’s death, grew older in the 1970s, Ag’s youngest grandchild, Dick Eastland, moved to the camp, gradually taking over operations alongside his wife Willetta, known as Tweety.
“They were much beloved,” Mimi Swartz, a Texas Monthly editor who has chronicled Camp Mystic’s ups and downs for more than a decade, told CNN. “A lot of these (campers) came from wealthy families, but they weren’t always happy families.”
Mystic provided an annual refuge for girls still searching for independence, and many who had spent time at Mystic felt relief to see the camp remain in family hands with a new generation of Eastlands.
“They were an absolutely perfect match,” said Sullivan. “Not everybody can work together and live together with the extended family, but they did.”
Dick and Tweety became a formidable team in running Camp Mystic – he the unquestioned leader who oversaw all operations and she the sensitive surrogate mother for campers.
“You became part of the family when you went there,” said Swartz.
By the time of the 2025 flooding, the camp was such a family affair it was nearly impossible for girls to go a day without encountering an Eastland. Hundreds of breakfasts were prepared each morning by Dick’s son Richard. The Guadalupe camp’s infirmary – known as Heaven Can Wait – was run by Dick’s daughter-in-law Mary Liz, a former Mystic camper and registered nurse who treated many sick and injured children herself.
Family legal dispute left camp in limbo
The aftermath of the tragedy isn’t the first time the Eastland family was caught up in a legal controversy that looked like it could threaten the future of Camp Mystic.
In 2007 Dick Eastland was sued by his brother Stacy, an attorney, accusing him of shortchanging the family-run corporation that owned Camp Mystic’s property millions of dollars in rent, part of a complicated legal arrangement Ag’s grandchildren set up to ensure they all got a share of ongoing income from the multi-million-dollar business they had inherited.
Six years of countersuits, appeals and legal wrangling followed, with suggestions that the only way to resolve the matter might be to split up the property, Texas Monthly reported. Family members finally agreed to a settlement, which became final in 2013. It paid $7.2 million to Dick Eastland’s siblings and cousins who had a share of the Camp Mystic property, the San Antonio Express-News reported, after both sides racked up legal fees that collectively exceeded the entire value of the business.
The deal ended squabbling that was painful both to the family and to campers watching it play out in court. With its future secure, it also cemented Dick Eastland and his children as the undisputed leaders of Camp Mystic going forward.
“There’s no question he was considered the leader of this family and the leader of this camp,” said Garrett, the investigator hired by the Texas House committee. “Tweety told us he was ‘large and in charge.’”
Aftermath of flood takes toll on family’s respect and prestige
In the immediate aftermath of the deadly flooding, which killed a total of 119 people in Kerr County, Dick Eastland and his son Edward – a camp director who was temporarily swept downriver while trying to save campers from the floods – were given praise for their efforts to personally save campers and counselors from the floods.
“It is not surprising to those who knew him that he gave his life trying to save the lives of those girls,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn said on the floor of the US Senate.
But families of many young victims, both living and dead, later filed lawsuits against the camp and the Eastlands claiming nothing had been done to prepare for evacuations in the case of flooding and weather warnings had not been passed on to the children, who were not allowed to have electronic devices at the camp.
The family of Cile Steward, the only victim who has never been found but is presumed dead, successfully got a judge in Austin – more than 100 miles away from the camp – to prohibit the Eastlands from making any changes at the Guadalupe campsite while there could still be evidence to collect.
A hearing in that lawsuit last month proved devastating for the Eastlands, with Edward acknowledging he had slept through a flood warning that had been texted to his phone as the waters rose.
“I think it should have been a more urgent alert,” he said.
Mary Liz later stated she had not reported the deaths to state regulators as legally required and agreed with an attorney for the Steward family that she had “abandoned” Cile.
The decision to close the camp for the summer does not change the pending lawsuits nor the open criminal investigation being conducted by the Texas Rangers. It also did not get any praise from Cile Steward’s parents.
“Camp Mystic did not withdraw its application out of grace,” the Stewards said in a statement. “It withdrew because the State of Texas was prepared to deny it.”
Sullivan, who was program director at Camp Mystic in 1978 when flooding from the remnants of Tropical Storm Amelia forced them to move to higher ground, said she considers the tough questioning of the Eastlands an attempted “crucifixion” of a family that did the best it could, but she also understands why so many people are struggling with how to respond to the deaths of the young people now known as Heaven’s 27.
“It’s tragic. It’s horrible, and it has torn this community apart,” she said. “I know it’s torn families apart and friends apart.”
Owners had been fighting for months to get camp reopened
The Eastlands’ central place in the lives of well-connected Texas families – along with the financial power of their operation in the community – has traditionally given the family a lot of political power, according to Swartz.
“The camp is part of the economic life of Kerr County,” she said. “All those camps are crucial to the economic life of that area.”
A report from the Kerrville Convention & Visitors Bureau in 2012 claimed more than $30 million in economic benefit from the network of summer camps in the area, the Hill Country Community Journal reported. That included money spent by families at the local municipal airport, where some campers were ferried to the remote beauty of Hill Country in private planes.
Their economic impact gave the Eastlands important ties throughout the community, making it awkward and painful for local residents when a side has to be picked. During the legal dispute between family members, three judges recused themselves, Swartz reported at the time. The final settlement came after the venue for a second civil trial had been moved out of Kerr County, according to the San Antonio News-Express.
Camp Mystic’s announcement to hold off on the 2026 season came after months of reassurances from the Eastland family that a scaled-down version could be operated from its Cypress Creek campus on higher ground, which was never touched by the floodwaters.
Just two days before their decision, the family that was synonymous with Camp Mystic offered to turn over the reins to save their summer.
“I will say, I think we’re willing to take a step back if camp can go on. That’s OK with us,” Mary Liz Eastland told the state House committee on Tuesday. “We are willing to take a step back and take a pause. As this family, I think that’s appropriate and OK.”
But a family accustomed to praise and accommodation from those in power in Texas instead was met with extreme skepticism from many lawmakers – along with a demand from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that state regulators deny their license.
“I think that was their last-ditch try,” Swartz said. “It’s just too many little girls that died on their watch.”
Future of family and camp now uncertain
Sullivan, who lives in Kerrville and still sees members of the Eastland family around town, has not spoken to them yet about their decision to drop this summer’s plans. Instead, she heard about it through a series of texts from friends and other camp alums.
Despite her support of the Eastland family and strong emotional ties to Camp Mystic, Sullivan said her initial reaction to the suspension was unexpected: Relief.
“I just felt an exhale, and my shoulders kind of dropped when I heard the news because everybody has had this emotional tension of holding a ball in the air,” she said.
She hopes young girls still get the opportunity for a formative summer experience at another camp if not at Mystic.
For families of victims who say the Eastlands must take more responsibility, there was a different sort of relief. A sense that more change is coming in response to their personal tragedies.
“Such immense loss and raw grief cannot co-exist with business-as-usual,” said Jill and Patrick Marsh, whose 8-year-old daughter Sarah is one of Heaven’s 27.
But the uncertainty about Camp Mystic’s future is also uncertainty for the family who made it their life’s mission and principal source of income. In their statement Thursday, the Eastland family said they are prepared to listen to the voices calling for change.
“Respect for those voices requires that we step back now,” they said.
CNN’s Pamela Brown, Shoshana Dubnow and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.
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