SUN, TEXAS. Sun is at the junction of State Highway 347 and Farm Road 366, on the Kansas City Southern Railroad five miles southeast of Beaumont in eastern Jefferson County. The site, located at Smith's Bluff, was purchased by the Sun Oil Company shortly after the discovery of massive amounts of crude oil at nearby Spindletop. A four-inch pipeline was built to the Spindletop fields, and four 55,000-barrel tanks, in addition to two earthen tanks designed to store over one million barrels of crude oil, were constructed at Sun. The Smith's Bluff site began shipping oil by sea in 1915, upon the improved channelization of the Neches River. The pipelines and storage tanks at the Sun terminal have continued to provide numerous jobs for Southeast Texans, particularly residents of Nederland, one mile to the south. A Sun City corporation vote on January 10, 1953, failed by a 142–98 count.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James Anthony Clark and Michel T. Halbouty, Spindletop (New York: Random House, 1952).
