HUNT, Texas — For 80 years, The Hunt Store was more than just a grocery store.
It was the place to be in this town of 1,332, which would triple in size when the summer camps up and down the Guadalupe River opened for the season.
It was the kind of joint where you could grab a beer with friends and also take a Bible study class. It had a post office and, for a time, a bank. It also became one of the Hill Country’s most iconic music venues.
On “Here’s the Scoop,” podcast co-host Morgan Chesky takes listeners on the ground to hear from survivors of Texas’ catastrophic flooding.
Now, in the wake of flash floods that killed at least 107 people across six counties, including 27 girls and counselors at nearby Camp Mystic, The Hunt Store has become a symbol of Texas-style resilience.
Despite being nearly gutted by surging floodwaters over the weekend, part of the building is still standing, with the storefront's sign altered to read "HUNT STRONG."
“We’re still here,” said owner Haley Lehrmann, 41, standing next to crates of food and water piled in front of the wreckage. “All the locals who are still just exhausted at the end of the day are coming here for a break. It’s still the hub.”
With the help of a generator, Lehrmann's crew cooked up 300 breakfast sandwiches on Tuesday and posted word on the store's Facebook page to "Please help yourself and spread the word."
The chimney and one of the store's limestone walls are largely intact, but the other walls are either badly damaged or gone altogether, and the stage where Texas music legends like the late Kinky Friedman and Billy Joe Shaver once performed is nearly destroyed.
Country music performer Dallas Moore said he played a gig at The Hunt Store on July 2, just a couple days before the flooding started.
“It was a great night,” Moore said. “It’s the kind of place where the young’uns and the older folks will get up and dance, and that’s what they did. Everybody was having a good time. We never dreamed this was going to happen.”
Lehrmann said she did not receive any warning that the floodwaters were coming. Her first inkling of trouble came when she was roused from her sleep at 4:30 a.m. on July 4 by a frantic phone from her general manager, Courtney Garrison, who lived above the store with her daughter, Stella.
Garrison told her there was water in the apartment.
“I was like, ‘What? Is there a leak?” Lehrmann said. “She said, ‘No, it’s the river. I was shocked. I was like, 'y’all gotta get on the roof.'”
Garrison said she was already on the roof when she made the call after being awakened by unfamiliar noises coming from the ground floor. When she opened the door to go downstairs to investigate, “there was water.”
“I was absolutely stunned,” she said. “I had to take a beat.”
She woke up her daughter and told her, “We’re going out the window.”
“I feel so bad saying we lost everything, but I’m so thankful we’re alive,” she said.
Lehrmann, who lives in a home on higher ground, said The Hunt Store sits right by the river and all she could do was watch as it was inundated.
“I was stuck at my house because the river was going through my property,” she said. “It was so frustrating not being able to come out and help because you don’t know what was going on. It was complete devastation, complete shock.”
Lehrmann said she’s determined to rebuild.
“People come here from all over the world just to go camp,” she said of the summer camps dotted along the riverbanks. “Every person that walks into the store has a memory. And if they don’t have one, they make one.”
“We would have people walk in that were 90-plus years old and say they had been in there as a kid,” added Lehrmann, who took ownership of the store in March 2024. “It’s a very special place.”
It even has a local specialty called a French Taco, which is a beef patty with cheese wrapped in a flour tortilla and seasoned with pico de gallo.
"A woman, Mrs. French, who worked at the store more than 50 years ago, came up with it after she ran out of hamburger buns," Lehrmann said. “It was just a hit. It’s been famous for 50 years.”
Ronnie Barker, who has lived in Hunt for 23 years with his wife, Kelly, said his daily ritual involves heading to The Hunt Store to "drink coffee with the guys."
“That’s the center point for the whole community," Barker said. "You hang out. Everybody knew everybody. If anyone needed anything, we were there to help each other."
Moore, who has been playing gigs at the store for over a decade, said many of the locals call it “the center of the universe.”
“The people who come here are proud and resilient Texans,” he said. “I believe they will be rebuilding.”
Minyvonne Burke reported from Hunt and Corky Siemaszko from New York City.
