Seguin ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Guadalupe County, Texas, United States. Its population was 29,433 at the 2020 census, and according to 2023 census estimates, the city had a population of 36,013.
Description Seguin's economy is primarily supported by a regional hospital, as well as the Schertz-Seguin Local Government Corporation water utility that supplies the surrounding greater San Antonio areas from nearby aquifers as far as Gonzales County. Several dams in the surrounding area are governed by the main offices of the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority, headquartered in downtown Seguin.
Seguin, named in honor of Juan Seguín, a Tejano Texian freedom fighter and early supporter of the Republic of Texas, is one of the oldest towns in Texas, founded just 16 months after the Texas Revolution began. The frontier settlement was a cradle of the Texas Rangers and home to celebrated Captain Jack Hays, perhaps the most famous Ranger of all. At that time, the Seguin area was a part of Gonzales County, the remaining portion known as present-day Belmont. The Rangers had found this was a good halfway stop between their patrol points. It had been maintained as a base camp by the Rangers since the early founding of the Dewitt Colony.
History Seguin was the home of Dr. John E. Park, who experimented in construction using concrete made from local materials. The nearly 100 structures—the courthouse, schools, churches, homes, cisterns, walls, etc.—made up the largest concentration of early 19th-century concrete buildings in the United States. About 20 of them remain standing.
The use of concrete largely ended when the railroad arrived in 1876, bringing cheap lumber and the equipment needed for brickmaking. The town had five brickworks, and the wooden buildings of downtown were completely replaced with brick by the beginning of World War I.
For almost 100 years, the town was dependent on the rich surrounding farmland and ranches. Then, the Texas oil boom came just as the Great Depression was taking down other towns and cities. The town commemorated its centennial by opening Max Starcke Park, with a golf course, a pavilion, picnic tables, and BBQ pits along a scenic river drive, and a curving dam that created a waterfall.
To preserve some of the historic character of the town, Seguin became one of the state's first Main Street cities, and the downtown district was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Fine homes by leading architects J. Reily Gordon, Solon McAdoo, Leo M.J. Dielman, Atlee B. Ayers, and Marvin Eickenroht dating from the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century can be found on many streets. However, the city does not have any officially designated historic residential districts.
The postwar era had industrial development, including a small mill that turned scrap metal into construction products.
In 1972, Motorola built a plant to manufacture automotive electronics. It was bought by Continental AG in 2006, became Vitesco Technologies in 2021, acquired by Schaeffler in 2024, and is the city's largest employer with 1,750 employees. Caterpillar opened a diesel engine assembly plant in 2008 which is the second largest employer.
Prehistory The Seguin area was once inhabited by the native hunter-gatherer Native Americans of Texas. An ongoing archeological dig indicates campgrounds dating back 10,000 years or so, with trade items from Mexico and Arizona. The early visitors may have come to gather pecans, because the native trees bearing the nut thrive in the river bottoms of the Guadalupe. By the time the first European explorers passed through, predominantly Tonkawas lived in the area, camping around the Guadalupe and other streams in the area. Eventually, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo settlers started farms and ranches in the location that became Seguin.
Early history José Antonio Navarro, one of the earliest settlers and an important figure of Texas history, developed a ranch near Seguin., Texas Settlement In 1831, land was granted to Umphries Branch by the Mexican government. The Branch and John Newton Sowell Sr. families settled in 1833 in the western part of Green DeWitt's colony."Seguin, Texas", Handbook of Texas Online Sowell was a farmer, and in 1833, his brothers and he became the first Anglo-American immigrants to raise corn in future Guadalupe County."Sowell Family" , Texas A&M University
Between 1827 and 1835, 22 families came to the area as part of the DeWitt Colony; by 1833, 40 land titles were in the region, 14 of which received grants directly from the Mexican government.Vivian Elizabeth Smyrl, "GUADALUPE COUNTY," Handbook of Texas Online <https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hcg12>. Retrieved April 29, 2011. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. In 1836, John Gladden King lived near Seguin. His farm neighbored the Sowells on the northwest and Branch on the southeast. A son, William Philip King, reportedly was part of a cannon crew and was the youngest defender killed during the Battle of the Alamo.Russell S. Hall, "KING, JOHN GLADDEN", Handbook of Texas Online <https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fki72>. Retrieved May 14, 2011. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. These homesteads were abandoned in the Runaway Scrape.
Old Seguin The town of Seguin was founded August 12, 1838, 16 months after Texas won its independence at the Battle of San Jacinto, making it one of the oldest towns in Texas. Members of Mathew Caldwell's Gonzales Rangers acquired land originally granted to Umphries Branch, who had departed during the Runaway Scrape and sold his land to Joseph S. Martin.
At this time, the Seguin area was a part of Gonzales County, the remaining portion known as present-day Belmont. The Rangers had found this was a good halfway stop between their patrol points. The grove of live oaks had become a familiar location. It had been maintained as a base camp by the Rangers since the early founding of the Dewitt Colony.
19th-century history Under an ancient live oak, 33 Rangers signed the charter for the town. Many were surveyors who joined Joseph Martin in laying out the lots for the town. Its original name was Walnut Springs, but was changed just six months later to honor San Jacinto veteran and then a senator of the Republic of Texas, Juan Seguín. The surveyors' plan for the city included a main north–south street that ran straight and flat for a mile and more. The streets form a grid, around a central square of two blocks, today's Courthouse Square and Central Park, formerly known as Market Square.
A tree called the Whipping Oak grows across from the courthouse. In the 19th century, runaway slaves and criminals were bound to an iron ring embedded in the tree, then whipped as a punishment.
Manuel Flores, veteran of San Jacinto and brother-in-law of Juan Seguin, established a ranch just south of Seguin in 1838. It became a safe-haven for San Antonio families and a staging point for counterattack when Bexar was overrun in 1842 by Santa Anna's forces under Ráfael Vásquez and Adrian Woll.
Leading the resistance forces from this location was Texas Ranger John Coffee "Jack" Hays. When duty allowed, Hays was a familiar resident of Seguin. In 1843, Hays set up a gathering point at the Walnut Branch Ranger Station in Seguin, where the classic Ranger character was born. He met Susan Calvert, whose father owned the Magnolia Hotel, where they married in April 1847.
Serving under Hays were two other famous Ranger residents of Seguin: Henry and Ben McCulloch. Their home known as Hardscramble still stands and was designated a Texas State Centennial historic site in 1936. Colonel James Clinton Neill, commander of the Alamo, was known to be buried here. The site was also historically marked during the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition.
Seguin was named the county seat, and Guadalupe County was organized, early in 1845, as Texas became a state. The first county judge was Michael H. Erskine. The town was incorporated in 1853, and a city government was organized under acting Mayor John R. King, until elections were held later that year and John D. Anderson became the first elected mayor.
A few years later, another town was laid out on the west side of Seguin, on land that had been titled by Alamo defender Thomas R. Miller, and sold in 1840 to Ranger James Campbell in partnership with Arthur Swift and Andrew Neill. This area became part of Seguin within a few years, but 150 years later, the east–west streets still do not match up to cross through the old Guadalupe Street border.
When Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and his German colonists were making their way in 1845 to the land they had bought to settle, Calvin Turner and Asa Sowell from Seguin were hired to guide them. Later, Seguin became a stopping point and trade center for German immigrants along their route from the ports of Indianola and Galveston to the German settlements around New Braunfels and Fredericksburg.Wolff, Linda. Indianola and Matagorda Island 1837–1887. Eakin Press, Austin, Texas, 1999. Many Germans en route heard of the hard times in those Hill Country settlements and decided, instead, to buy land and settle around Seguin.
After Texas became a state, many settlers arrived from the Old South, bringing in hundreds of slaves in total, though only a few plantation owners held more than a dozen slaves. Most of the slaves lived on small farms with their owners, who remained subsistence farmers for years after settling their land. The contributions of African Americans to building the community are all but ignored in local histories written during the period when slavery was still being excused as justifiable due to the alleged low development of those enslaved. In fact, for the first 50 years or so, and probably for the first 100 years of the town, blacks did most of the construction work, including the main concrete buildings, such as Sebastopol.
Education was important to the town. By 1849, it had chartered a school. The first schoolhouse was built in 1850; it burned and was soon replaced by a two-story limecrete building. This Guadalupe High School, now a part of the St James Parochial School, was recognized by a historical marker in 1962 as the oldest continuously used school building in Texas.
Seguin was home to Dr. John E. Park's concrete (limecrete). Called "the Mother of Concrete Cities" in the 1870s, the town once had nearly 100 structures made of limecrete, including the courthouse, schools, churches, houses, cisterns, and many walls. So many limecrete walls and corrals were built that Seguin gave the effect of being a walled city. This was the largest and most significant concentration of 19th-century concrete buildings in the U.S. About 20 of these vintage buildings survive today.
In 1857, Frederick Law Olmsted, later famous as the landscape architect of New York's Central Park, toured Texas, writing dispatches to the New York Times. Olmsted exclaimed at the concrete structures he found here, almost on the edge of the frontier, and described the city as "the prettiest town in Texas."
One surviving concrete home, the Sebastopol House; built in 1856, is a Texas Historical Commission landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places due to its unusual limecrete construction and architectural style.