Bubble Inn saw generations of 8-year-olds enter as strangers and emerge as confident young ladies equipped with new skills from the great outdoors and lifelong friends – bonds that would one day prove vital in the face of unfathomable tragedy.

Young girls, camp employees and vacationers are among the at least 120 people who died when Texas' Guadalupe River flooded.

Some camps in the region had to be evacuated, and local newspapers described how Camp Mystic was among those cut off from the outside world. According to a Kerr County history book, floodwaters at Camp Mystic almost reached the top of the dining hall’s stairs.