Camp Mystic files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

Camp Mystic, the all-girls camp in Hunt where 25 campers, two counselors and longtime director Dick Eastland died in the July 4, 2025, Guadalupe River flood, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Wednesday — a move that immediately halts the wrongful-death lawsuits brought against the camp by victims’ families.

The petition, filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, lists Camp Mystic, LLC and three affiliated entities controlled by the Eastland family: Natural Fountains Properties, Inc., the camp’s land-holding company; Mystic Camps Family Partnership, Ltd.; and Mystic Camps Management, LLC. The four cases are expected to be jointly administered under Case No. 26-90621, assigned to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher M. Lopez, according to court records.

Under federal bankruptcy law, the filing triggers an automatic stay — a provision that freezes most litigation against a debtor the moment a petition is filed. For Camp Mystic, that means the wrongful-death and negligence suits pending against the camp in Travis County, which had trial settings scheduled through most of 2027, can no longer move forward unless the families pursue their claims in bankruptcy court or persuade the judge to lift the stay, a request the camp is likely to oppose.

The timing is conspicuous. The filing lands days before the one-year mark of the flood — and freezes a litigation calendar that, until Wednesday, had Camp Mystic set for trial in case after case deep into 2027. Bankruptcy stops that clock.

In a companion notice, the camp’s attorneys designated the matter as a “complex” Chapter 11 case, telling the court the debtors’ total debt exceeds $10 million and that more than 50 parties have an interest in the proceedings. The petition estimates liabilities of $10 million to $50 million. In a mass-casualty bankruptcy, the “parties in interest” typically include the people who have sued — meaning the flood victims’ families are likely to be counted among the camp’s largest creditors. A full list of creditors had not been filed as of Wednesday.

The bankruptcy was authorized June 23 by the camp’s four managers — Willetta A. Eastland, Richard G. Eastland Jr., George A. Eastland and Edward S. Eastland — according to resolutions filed with the petition. Edward S. Eastland signed the filing as the family’s authorized representative. Dick Eastland, who co-owned and directed the camp for decades before his death in the flood, was the patriarch of the family that still controls it.

Camp Mystic is represented by restructuring attorneys Martin Sosland of Dallas and Jeff Prostok of Fort Worth, of the firm Vartabedian Katz Hester & Haynes LLP — bankruptcy specialists whose involvement signals the filing was planned, not a last-minute reaction.

The initial petition does not say whether Camp Mystic intends to reorganize and reopen or to liquidate. The managers’ resolutions authorize either path, and they also empower the camp to seek debtor-in-possession financing to keep operating during the case. The detailed schedules of assets and debts, the creditor list, and the “first-day” motions that usually follow within days — and that would reveal whether the camp plans to resume operations — had not yet been filed.