From before the Civil War until at least World War II, cotton was the money crop of the local farms, and the county had at least a dozen gins, with three in the town of Seguin, but agriculture was more diversified than in many counties where cotton was king, with corn, peanuts, hogs, and cattle, as well as wheat, oats, sugarcane, and most notably, pecans. The tiny but tasty native nuts were an early export. The crops improved as the bottomlands were converted to orchards, and eventually bigger varieties of nuts were grafted onto the local trees. This was one of the first counties to have a pecan growers' association, and in 1921, its leader, P.K. DeLaney, helped start the Texas Pecan Growers Association. The county remains one of the state's leading producers. Seguin has been called 'a big orchard with a small town in it' because almost every house is shaded by a pecan tree in the yard. A tribute to the nut's importance is "the World's Largest Pecan" erected on the courthouse lawn.