#TBT: Sunshine Cemetery is all that remains of old Corpus Christi farming community
The name seems an odd choice for a burial plot, but Sunshine Cemetery on the city’s Southside isn’t a nod to sunny days. The name has its roots in the small farming community called Sunshine that occupied the area in the early 1900s.
Located about 2 miles west of Oso Bay, the area was first known as Encinal, meaning a grove of oak trees. Around 1900, it was just a collection of a few houses and a school, with farm tracts being sold by James Anderson, a land agent out of San Antonio.
Only a few years later, a reporter with the Corpus Christi Caller wrote up an account of a recent visit in the Dec. 4, 1903, edition:
“Where several years ago there was nothing by Chaparral in all its density, today there are dozens of thriving truck farms, and large forces of men are constantly at work clearing more land. Anything that grows in Texas attains a prolific growth in that rich soil, diversification being the principal feature of farming down there."
In addition to the farms and school, a church was under construction and new roads connected the farms to the rest of the city. The school had 43 pupils in November 1903, and several articles touted the cabbages, onions and cotton being shipped from the Encinal farms.
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The area began using the name Sunshine around 1903, when a post office was assigned to the vicinity, and the Encinal name began to drop of out use. The Caller also began carrying a short column, headlined “From Sunshine,” with correspondence reports of the comings and goings of the local families.
The two big meeting spots of the community were Sunshine School and the Union Baptist Church, which started in an old Sunshine school building. The name was changed to Sunshine Baptist Church, and then Gardendale Baptist Church.
Sunshine school, originally called La Bovida and then Encinal School, opened in 1887, and was in session just two months of the year in those earliest years. In 1941, the decision was made to combine two rural district schools in Sunshine and Aberdeen, another small community near Seaside Memorial Park today (note the oldest portion of Seaside is known as the Aberdeen section).
The new district also opened another school building called Peary Place, located off Paul Jones Avenue and taking in many students from the new naval air station. The district was first called Sunshine-Aberdeen but later became Sundeen.
In addition to the Peary Place school, there was Blanche Moore Elementary on Williams Drive, Fraser Elementary at McArdle and Airline roads, Sundeen High School at Lexington Boulevard (now South Padre Island Drive) and Airline Road, Calk Elementary on Marie Street and Sundeen Junior High on Everhart Road. In 1957, the last Sundeen school opened, Woodlawn Elementary at Woodlawn and Bernice drives. The following year, voters agreed to consolidate with Corpus Christi ISD after two earlier failed votes.
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Eventually all that remained of the Sunshine name was the cemetery at the corner of Rodd Field and Wooldridge roads.
As the families connected to the cemetery died or moved away, the local connections to the plots were lost and began to become overgrown. Several people rallied to help get the weeds and trash under control in the early ’80s, and in 1985 the cemetery received a state historical marker, researched by 18-year-old Ray High School salutatorian Dieter Jobe as part of his Eagle Scout project. His research, which took 24 months, saw him conducting interviews and accessing personal records and documents at La Retama Library and the Nueces County Courthouse.
Seaside Memorial Park purchased Sunshine Cemetery in the mid-‘90s and manages its upkeep now, with burials still taking place.
Hard to imagine the small spot in the midst of the Southside’s sprawling neighborhoods, shopping centers and large schools was once a little collection of farms named Sunshine.
Allison Ehrlich writes about things to do in South Texas and has a weekly Throwback Thursday column on local history.
This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Sunshine Cemetery all that remains of Corpus Christi farming community
