Saffold Dam stands at Flores Crossing on the Guadalupe River in Seguin, where a natural ford long made this a notable passage and settlement site. The area preserves evidence of Paleo-Indian use stretching back thousands of years, and in the nineteenth century it became associated with the Flores and Saffold families. William Saffold improved a natural rock dam to power his gristmill, and later Henry Troell expanded it for a cotton gin and, in 1895, hydroelectric generators that gave Seguin its first pumped water and electric system, among Texas’s earliest. Its present concrete S-curve form largely dates to Max Starcke Park’s 1938 construction.