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.