Guffey

Guffey, on the Southern Pacific line two miles south of Beaumont in east central Jefferson County, received a post office in 1901, shortly after the Spindletop oil field was discovered. It was named for oilman and financier J. M. Guffey of Pittsburgh. Besieged by thousands of eager oilmen, speculators, and ne'er-do-wells, Guffey became a stop on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. Although its post office was discontinued in 1925, Guffey continued for a time as a community after the oil boom subsided. It had an estimated 300 residents and four businesses during the mid-1930s. Its population declined substantially in subsequent years, and in the mid-1970s Guffey was marked on maps by an intensive concentration of oil wells and tank farms.