The 10,000-Year Flood

Photographs by Tamir Kalifa David and Cheryl Chambers bought their property along the Guadalupe River in 2008, the day the for-sale sign went up. They kept it wild and green, a private retreat in the Texas Hill Country where they could lounge in the bed of a pickup and watch the birds and the deer, until just a few years ago, when they decided to convert it into an RV park. There were small resorts and inns all along the Guadalupe, and plenty of places to park, or rent, an RV, including in their tiny town of Center Point. But there may have been no prettier bend on the river, with its glassy surface and its bank shaded by bald-cypress trees older than the state of Texas itself.David and a friend laid power cables, installed water hookups, and carved short, looping roads from Highway 27 to the water’s edge. The camp, which they called Guadalupe Keys Resort, opened in the spring of 2023. There were five high-end campers parked beneath the cypress and pecan trees, and pads for four more. The river was shallow in this stretch—only about two and a half feet deep—and parents would sit along the banks and watch their kids romp through the gentle current. Last year, its third season, the whole place was booked for the Fourth of July weekend.By the evening of Thursday, July 3, 25 guests had checked in. The forecast called for rain, possibly a lot. At 1:18 that afternoon, in fact, the National Weather Service had issued a flood watch for the Hill Country. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering the drought that had been baking central Texas for the past four years. The summer before had been so dry that the Guadalupe briefly stopped flowing, and David had to tell his guests not to splash around in the stagnant river. The hard rain didn’t fall that evening; it waited until the early morning. And then, in the dark hours before dawn, it fell faster and harder that anyone could recall. Faster and harder, really, than anyone could have imagined. Tamir Kalifa for The At