Four years ago, I contributed the “Guad Is Great” essay about the Upper Guadalupe River for the book Viva Texas Rivers: Adventures, Misadventures, and Glimpses of Nirvana along Our Storied Waterways, edited by Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester (Texas A&M Press). The book was selected by the Texas State Library as the Texas Great Read 2025 Adult Selection https://www.tsl.texas.gov/greatreadtexas/tgradultselection2025
Here’s an excerpt of my essay describing the area that got hit by flash flooding – before the flood.
Schumacher Crossing
The river insinuates itself into the rocky oak-and-cedar scrub landscape of western Kerr County very subtly. There are no specific headwaters, no gushing artesian spring. Dry washes and gullies gradually collecti enough moisture from small springs to hold water in pools that stretch longer and longer until a steady, shallow stream trickles over a hard limestone bed and then tumbles out of the craggy hills toward the sea more than two hundred miles away.
At Boneyard Draw, on Farm-to-Market 1340, a sheer sixty-foot limestone bluff in the distance marks a bend in the drainage, the first hint of canyons to come. Just below the crossing is the turnoff to Kerr Wildlife Management Area, where the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has been testing cedar (Ashe juniper) eradication, brush clearing, and other water-saving land management strategies. In addition to being a center of white-tailed deer research, this WMA holds one of the greatest concentrations of wild turkey in the state.
Less than a mile down the road, I detour down a county road, toward Cherry Springs Ranch, Guadalupe Bluffs Ranch, and Price’s Joy Spring Ranch Bed & Breakfast. At a low-water crossing, I find the river, sparkling in the sun the palest of greens with a slight tinge of blue, scooting over the hard rock bed.
A mile farther, the river is moving full tilt and roaring to life, with a deeper blue tint, a ribbon of sustenance snaking along a narrow alley guarded by soaring cypress trees and flanked by high bluffs, some rising one hundred feet above the water surface. Turkey buzzards politely wait on a fence poist while I pass before resuming cleanup duty on a mangled piece of roadkill.
A slide leading directly into the water on the banks of Mo Ranch Camp marks the beginning of the “camp run,” consisting of Camp Waldemar and Camp Stewart on the North Fork and Camp Mystic, Heart O’ the Hills Camp, and Camp Arrowhead on the South Fork. Crider’s Rodeo and Dancehall is also on the South Fork. There are not too many places in this world where a couple can two-step under the summer stars to the sounds of western swing fiddles and the steady rush of the river.
The Guadalupe widens, narrow, and spills from limestone shelf to limestone shelf as it moves past patios, swings, and ornate rockwork of dream ranches owned by CEOs, corporations, and churches. In one field by the river, scale replicas of Stonehenge and two thirteen-foot-high Easter Island statues have been erected.
The North Fork and the South Fork join just below the Hunt Store, a community gathering spot for vacationers, hunters, fishermen, swimmers, and visitors for more than eighty years. Several generations of the wealthiest, most influential Texans have spent the summers of their youth on this part of the river, learning the basics of life and being exposed to a wilder, more untamed version of the natural world than exists near the cities where they came from. Small wonder riverfront property here has been the most coveted real estate in the Hill Country for decades.
Anyone can glean a semblance of that experience by passing a night at an old-fashioned resort such at the Waltonia Lodges on the Guadalupe River, or jumping in and cooling off at Schumacher’s Crossing, the first significant swimming hole with easy public access on the river.
The bluffs fade farther into the background from the river as it flows between Hunt and Ingram. Ingram Dam creates enough large pools to support a bass board or a one-man sailboat and offers younger river rats the pleasure of dam sliding.
Parks become more plentiful farther downstream: Louise Hays Park on the south bank through most of Kerrville and Kerrville-Schreiner Park east of town. In both parks, people are disc throwing, fishing, and hanging out. The river gains stature but loses a bit of its curb appeal as it flows past Kerrville, Center Point, and Comfort, the bluffs considerably diminished, most of the cypress logged out long ago….
I keep looking for the right superlative to describe the upper Guadalupe’s blend of wilderness and playground and one remark sticks in my mind. At Kerr WMA, I stumbled upon Anthony Glorioso, a fresh-faced, curly-headed college student from Poughkeepsie, New York, who was working as a field assistant on a study of wild turkeys by radiotelemetry. Glorioso had never been to this part of the world, he said.
Asked about his first impressions, he it up.
“It’s like Africa!”
The New Yorker got it. The Guadalupe is that special.
and here’s what I wrote for texashighways.com following the July 4 2025 flood:
In the June issue of Texas Highways, I wrote about the Lower Guadalupe River below Canyon Lake as a vacation and recreation destination. I half-apologized for the extended drought that had impacted the river, assuring readers that despite low flows, fun could still be had.
On July 4, on that same stretch of river, RVs and campers had to be evacuated due to flash flooding. That week, floods impacted the Colorado, Llano, San Gabriel, Frio, and Nueces rivers and Big Sandy Creek in the Texas Hill Country. They also affected the Concho River by San Angelo, and in the Trans-Pecos region of far West Texas, waterfalls poured over Santa Elena Canyon for the first time in decades.
One hundred and twenty-five miles upstream from Canyon Lake, a cluster of thunderstorms infused with tropical moisture stalled over the upper Guadalupe River and its headwaters. As copious amounts of rain poured, the river and surrounding creeks swelled out of their banks. The water unleashed death and destruction as it ripped through summer camps, RV parks, cabins, homes, resorts, and campgrounds around Hunt, Ingram, and Kerrville. The deluge took the lives of people who were doing what Texans love to do in the summer: hang out by the water, swim, float, fish, paddle, and play on what is the prettiest stretch of river you’ll find in these parts.
Spring-fed, clear-running, and cool even in 100-degree heat, Hill Country rivers renew, replenish, and refresh in ways other rivers do not. A big part of their appeal is the rocky limestone topography they pass through on their way to the coast. That same landscape has earned its reputation as Flash Flood Alley. With little topsoil, hard rains quickly run off into creeks, streams, and rivers and turn waterways into raging, unforgiving torrents.
Ten years ago, on Memorial Day weekend, a destructive flash flood swelled the Blanco River, which rose 40 feet and swept through the town of Wimberley, killing 10 people. Property damage was severe. I cried seeing the cypress trees by my stretch of the river gone. We helped friends recover, while hearing harrowing stories of escape. The people of Wimberley, their neighbors, and strangers all converged along the river, rolled up their sleeves and started the arduous task of cleaning up and building back, just as Texans and people from all over the world are doing around Hunt, Ingram, and Kerrville, and in all the other parts of Texas impacted by flash floods.
It’s what Texans do.
The businesses along the lower Guadalupe below Canyon Dam have reopened and river lovers have returned. The healing for those around Hunt, Ingram, and Kerrville will not be so swift. The recovery is going to take months. The rebuild will take years. Some scars are permanent; the loss of life cannot be undone. But 10 years down the line, I can tell you there is hope. The Blanco remains the shining jewel of Wimberley, the main attraction for the hundreds of thousands who visit the community every year. Blue Hole is booked weeks in advance. Jacob’s Well is flowing again. Down by the river, young cypress trees have popped up where giant cypresses had been swept away by floodwaters. But across the river, where a stand of tall cypress survived, I can gaze up high into their branches and see debris from the flood of 10 years ago, a remnant and reminder of when this river ran too wild.
There will come a time when the upper Guadalupe is once again the Hill Country river of summer dreams, where the sounds of children learning life lessons at summer camps and vacationers kicking back to enjoy the natural world mixes with the soothing sound of flowing water. Until then, we grieve. We pitch in and help our neighbors. It’s what Texans do.