HUNT, TEXAS – A year after the floods devastated Hunt, claiming more than 130 lives and shattering treasured hometown businesses, there are signs of a comeback.
Just five miles down the road, Crider’s Rodeo and Dancehall is open again. For 101 years, it’s been a place where generations have come to celebrate, connect, and make memories. As Tracy Moore puts it, “This has been here for so long. You hear so many stories of people that their grandparents brought them here. I guess I’m just really privileged to be a part of it.”
Last July, everything changed. When the water started rising, the family could see how quickly it was turning dangerous. Dakota Moore remembers arriving to find the water already closing in. “It was just coming up to the ground right here, probably about four feet below this concrete, and it wasn’t 15 minutes it was coming into the building. That’s how fast.”
They tried to secure the doors, but the force of the flood was relentless. “It blew the back door open, blew the windows out… both these doors flew open,” he said.
When the water finally receded, the cleanup -- and the reality -- set in. “Our game room… the doors blew in and both pool tables were flipped upside down,” Dakota said. “We had a Pac-Man game… completely destroyed, full of mud.”
The damage wasn’t just heavy, it was violent.
“It probably wasn’t a swimming pool. It was probably more like a washing machine… very violent, the water that came through here.”
And the flood didn’t just leave its mark on the building -- it left this family grieving, too. Tracy says she got a call that morning with news she still struggles to say out loud: “I got a call… saying that Renee was missing and they couldn’t find her… She had been one of the ones that had been washed away.”
Tracy’s niece, Renee, was a little girl who loved spending summers at Crider’s. “She loved Crider’s,” Tracy said. “She was just laughing all the time. She loved life.”
Now, as the doors open again, Renee’s memory has a place here—alongside the community that helped bring Crider’s back. *“We have made it a year,”* Tracy said. *“I hope that there’s some sense of peace that people have after a year.”*
In Hunt, Crider’s reopening is more than a return to business. It’s a symbol of recovery and resilience.