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^qv 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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: James Anthony Clark and Michel T. Halbouty, Spindletop (New York: Random House, 1952).

Robert Wooster
 

Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. "," http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/htg15.html (accessed March 3, 2008).

(NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")