Editing Seguin, Texas (section)

===20th century history===
From before the Civil War until at least World War II, cotton was the money crop of the local farms, and the county had at least a dozen gins, with three in the town of Seguin, but agriculture was more diversified than in many counties where cotton was king, with corn, peanuts, hogs, and cattle, as well as wheat, oats, sugarcane, and most notably, pecans. The tiny but tasty native nuts were an early export. The crops improved as the bottomlands were converted to orchards, and eventually bigger varieties of nuts were grafted onto the local trees. This was one of the first counties to have a pecan growers' association, and in 1921, its leader, P.K. DeLaney, helped start the [[Texas Pecan Growers Association]]. The county remains one of the state's leading producers. Seguin has been called 'a big orchard with a small town in it' because almost every house is shaded by a pecan tree in the yard.  A tribute to the nut's importance is "the World's Largest Pecan" erected on the courthouse lawn.

Small mills were put on the Guadalupe River even before the Civil War. [[William Saffold]] established a mill at what is today [[Max Starcke Park]]. Later, [[Henry Troell]] made major improvements there, and in 1894, used hydroelectric power to light the town. The City of Seguin took over the dam and electric plant in 1907. The supply of cheap and reliable electricity helped to make possible several gins, mills, silos, an ice plant and ice cream maker, a cold meat storage facility, and other types of [[agribusiness]].

In 1912, citizens of Seguin lured a struggling church school to the city with cash, and 15 acres of land donated by Louis Fritz. It grew to a junior college and then into a four-year college to become today's [[Texas Lutheran University]], with some 1,400 students and boasting high rankings on the ''[[U.S. News & World Report]]'' comparisons of universities.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.tlu.edu/|title=Home|website=TLU}}</ref>

During this time, Texas [[State Architect]], [[Atlee Ayres]] designed several commercial, public and residential buildings in Seguin. In 1912 he designed the Starcke Furniture Company, the Seguin High School building aka Mary B. Erskine School (1914), the Aumont Hotel (1916), Langner Hall at Texas Lutheran University and the Blumberg and Breustedt mansions.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/stories/2009/09/14/focus1.html |title=Building on Providence - San Antonio Business Journal |publisher=Bizjournals.com |date= |accessdate=March 16, 2014}}</ref>

During the 1920s, the county began to enjoy a foretaste of an oil boom. While the first fields were at the far edge of the county, near Luling, the paperwork of deeds and leases (as well as any resulting lawsuits) passed through the Guadalupe County Courthouse. Then in December 1929, the [[Darst Creek Field]] was opened, only 15 miles east of Seguin. (The creek had been named for colonist and landowner Jacob C. Darst. He was one of the original "Old Eighteen", defenders of the Gonzales cannon and then a member of the [[Gonzales Ranging Company]] relief force to the Alamo during the siege in 1836.)

With the Darst Field, Seguin became a supply center, and residents were able to rent out rooms to oil field workers for cash even during the worst years of the depression of the 1930s. As a result, Seguin was able to collect taxes when other towns just had to give up. It used the money to match federal grants for what some derided as "make-work" projects. Under the leadership of the popular mayor, [[Max Starcke]], Seguin was transformed, with a new post office, a new [[Art Deco]] City Hall, courthouse, jailhouse and fountain in Central Park, new storm sewers and sidewalks, and a small park along Walnut Branch, with rustic stone walls that protected the historic springs and traced the route of the stagecoach as it headed west through town. The little city had three swimming pools, one for whites, one for blacks at the segregated high school, and one for Spanish-speaking citizens at the Juan Seguin school.

Max Starcke's biggest achievement was a large park along the Guadalupe River, designed by [[Robert H.H. Hugman]], famous now as "the Father of the [[San Antonio River Walk|River Walk]]" in San Antonio. The park featured a handsome Art Deco recreation building designed by Hugman<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.hillcountrydeco.com/institutional/seguinrec/ |title=Hill Country Deco &#124; Institutional &#124; Seguin Recreation Building |access-date=August 29, 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130928005104/http://www.hillcountrydeco.com/institutional/seguinrec/ |archive-date=September 28, 2013 }}</ref> (now offices) with changing rooms for the swimming pool. The nine-hole course was designed by [[John Bredemus]], a prolific course designer who has been called "the father of Texas golf". The park offered picnic tables and bar-be-que pits between a scenic river drive and the river. Most of all, at a disused mill, Hugman and the young men of the [[National Youth Administration]] put a curving dam. As the 1938 dedication marker tells, funds were raised in part by public subscription. Dozens of groups and individuals made contributions to build the park that the town named for its popular mayor, who was moving on to, and soon to head, the [[Lower Colorado River Authority]] in Austin.

After World War II, entrepreneurs fresh out of the university used electric furnaces to melt scrap into reinforcing bars with a company then called Structural Metals. The minimill (now CMC Steel) has been joined by manufacturers including Alamo Group, building roadside mowing equipment; Schaeffler (was Vitesco Technologies, Continental Automotive Systems, originally Motorola), making electronic powertrain control modules and emissions sensors; Hexcel, producing reinforcements for composites using glass fiber, carbon fiber, aramids, and specialty yarns;<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hexcel.com/About/Site-Locations/1456/hexcel-seguin|title=Seguin Location &#124; Hexcel|website=www.hexcel.com}}</ref> Minigrip, manufacturing re-closeable plastic bags for food and home storage; [[Tyson Foods]], processing chicken. In 2009 Caterpillar opened a plant assembling diesel engines. Most recently Rave Gears, a make of precisions gears, opened a plant and headquarters.