The family of 8-year-old Cile Steward, who was swept away in the flood last Fourth of July and whose body still has not been recovered, had asked District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to prevent the owners from reopening the facility and to halt any construction while the lawsuit is pending. Their request for a temporary injunction maintains that any changes at the camp could destroy evidence needed for their lawsuit.
Gamble ruled that Camp Mystic’s owners must not alter or demolish the cabins where campers were housed during the floods, and said they must not use the portion of the camp closest to the Guadalupe River where those cabins were located.
“What we’re trying to do is preserve the evidence that’s there so that we can understand, so that future campers will never be put in a situation like this again," Will Steward, Cile's father, told reporters after the hearing.
The campers and counselors were killed when the fast-rising floodwaters roared through a low-lying area of the summer camp before dawn on the Fourth of July. All told, the destructive flooding killed at least 136 people, raising questions about how things went so terribly wrong.
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 worst thing you can do is put a bunch of 8-year-olds on a bus and try to drive them out of there. They all would have drowned,” said Mikal Watts, an attorney for Camp Mystic and its family of owners.
Attorneys for Camp Mystic have expressed sympathy for the girls’ families but maintained there was little they could have done during the catastrophic flooding that quickly overcame the camp. Pictures of the rising floodwaters were shown in court Wednesday.
“Nobody had every seen a prior flood anything like we saw in 2025,” Watts said.
More than 850 campers have already signed up to attend camp this summer, he said. The camp still needs to be approved for a license by state regulators to operate this summer.
