Saffold Dam

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Saffold Dam, right there in Guadalupe County. Now, some things start humble, and this is one of those stories. What you're looking at began as nothing more than a natural rock outcropping sitting in a river, minding its own business.

No grand design, no engineer's blueprint. Just rock and water doing what rock and water do. But the right people had a way of seeing potential where others just saw scenery.

The land here was once owned by a man named William Saffold, back in the mid-1800s, and his name stuck to this place even as the place itself kept changing. That's the kind of legacy that outlasts a man. Then along comes Henry Troell, sometime in the late 1800s, and Troell looked at that natural rock outcropping and saw something more.

He added rock to the dam, raising the water level, and you know what that gave him? Enough power to run a cotton gin. Now that is turning a river into a workhorse.

But even that wasn't the end of it. The city of Seguin bought Troell's property in 1907, and the river's story took another turn. Seguin had bigger ideas about what all that moving water could do, and subsequent improvements eventually led to the establishment of a full hydroelectric plant on the dam's south side.

What started as a rock shelf in a river became a source of power for a whole city. William Saffold's name on the dam, Troell's rock and ambition in the foundation, and Seguin's vision carrying it the rest of the way. That's a lot of history built into one stretch of river.

What the marker says

Named for William Saffold, who owned land here in the mid-1800s, Saffold Dam is typical of many mill dams built during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally a natural rock outcropping, the dam was first improved by Henry Troell in the late 1800s when he added rock to the dam to raise the water level to power a cotton gin. The city of Seguin bought Troell's property in 1907 to further develop the river's hydroelectricity, and subsequent improvements have led to the establishment of a hydroelectric plant on the dam's south side. (1991)