DUANE
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Duane's take
The way the marker at Somerville tells it, here's the story as best I can carry it to you. Now picture Burleson County coming out the far end of the Great Depression, and the Somerville Independent School District trying to give its students something worth showing up for. The school board, they didn't sit on their hands.
On October third, 1938, they filed a Works Progress Administration project proposal, and that proposal had one clear purpose: build a gymnasium. The proposal was accepted, and the work began. Here's the part that I think deserves a moment of quiet appreciation.
Local workers, skilled and unskilled both, went out to nearby Yegua Creek and quarried the native stone themselves, right out of the ground, right out of the land they already knew. That stone became the walls. That creek became part of the building.
The structure they raised was rustic, and I mean that as a compliment, the kind of solid and honest construction that tends to outlast the people who doubted it. When the work was done, July second, 1940, what stood there housed a gymnasium, an auditorium stage, locker rooms, and lecture rooms. Decades passed, and in 1987 the old gymnasium got a new name to carry forward: the Yegua Center.
Repairs followed in 1988, and here's the line that lands it for me. The building has been in continuous use for Somerville ISD school and community activities ever since. Stone from a creek, hands from the community, and a proposal filed on a fall day in 1938.
Still standing. Still used. Burleson County doesn't let good work go to waste.
What the marker says
As the Somerville Independent School District (SISD) emerged from the Great Depression, the school board filed a Works Progress Administration project proposal on October 3, 1938, to build a gymnasium. The proposal was accepted and construction on the gymnasium began. Local skilled and unskilled workers quarried native stone from the nearby Yegua Creek. The rustic structure was completed on July 2, 1940, and housed a gymnasium, auditorium stage, locker rooms and lecture rooms. In 1987, the gymnasium became known as the Yegua Center. Repairs were made in 1988 and the building has been in continuous use for SISD school and community activities.