Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, September 30, 1997

Sunset name has several stories

by Jim Bradshaw

About 1890, it was decided that the town known today as Sunset would be called Sibilleville, after the prominent Sibille family there. There are several stories about how the name came to be Sunset.

One is that railroad workers would name the new stops each day as they reached them, and this stop they named Sunset simply because they got there at the end of the day.

A second one is that a conductor on the Sunset Limited, which used to go through the village, asked that it be called Sunset, after the train.

Yet another revolves around a meeting held shortly before the Civil War by the residents of nearby Grand Coteau, most of whom did not want the railroad to go through their community because they were afraid that the passengers might bring yellow fever. There was much discussion about it, but it was finally decided that the railroad would go elsewhere. One of those who wanted the railroad to go through Grand Coteau objected on the grounds that "if the railroad does not go through Grand Coteau, our community's sun has set." The railroad didn't pass through, and the new town was called Sunset.

A few miles west of Grand Coteau, Napoléon Robin, a prominent planter for whom the main street of Sunset is named, was among the first to give a railroad right of way through his plantation.

Construction was delayed by the Civil War, but the track was finally laid in the 1880s, and businesses began to grow near the depot.

Sunset was first chartered in 1891. On Nov. 13, 1904, it was incorporated as a village. It was incorporate as a town on Nov. 1, 1949.

Victor Hugo Sibille was Sunset's first mayor. He was an innovative man who organized a telephone company, syrup mills, lumber yards, sawmills, and cotton gins in St. Landry and Lafayette parishes.

Cotton was king then, and cotton brokeres living and working in Sunset needed ready cash. Silver, brought from Opelousas by wagon, was used to pay the planters. The wagons traveled through Bellevue Woods. Bands of thieves also used the wooded area as a place to ambush the silver wagons. To avoid them, a group of businessmen formed the Bank of Sunset and Trust in 1906. It opened for business in a building that now serves as the Sunset town hall.