About Lufkin

Angelina County is the only one of Texas 254 counties named for a woman. It was named for Angelina, an Indian girl described in the journals of Spanish and French explorers. Her name was also given to the Angelina River.

Lufkin was named for Abraham P. Lufkin, a Maine sea captain who settled in Galveston and became a good friend of Paul Bremond, whose Houston and East Texas Railroad in 1882 founded Lufkin.

The balanced-type oil field pumping unit used throughout the world to extract oil from the earth was invented by Walter W. Trout of Lufkin Industries in 1926.

Local industrial plants pioneered the manufacture of two well-known wood products. Southland Paper Mills made the first newsprint from southern pine trees in 1940 and Southern Pine Lumber Company made the first southern pine plywood in the 1960s.

"Born to Lose," the Ray Charles classic, was written by Ted Daffen, a Lufkin bandleader, musician, recording star and songwriter. The song was written in 1942, but it wasn’t until 1962, when Charles recorded the song, that it soared to the top of the music charts as a million dollar hit.

Texas Governor Allan Shivers was born in Lufkin and was the only governor to run on both the Democratic and Republic tickets at the same time.

Pete Runnels, who won two American League batting champions while playing for the Boston Red Socks, grew up in Lufkin.

In the early l900s, one of Lufkin’s biggest problems was hogs running loose in the downtown streets. When W.N. Glenn became mayor, he had the hogs arrested and put in the city jail because there was no pen that could hold them. Glenn later turned the hogs loose because, in his words, "the prisoners had cause to complain."

One of Lufkin’s most famous bands was the Hoo Hoo Band, which traveled all over the U.S. as the official band of the International Concatenated Order of the Hoo, a lumberman’s fraternity. The band was the only Texas band to play on the midway of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

There are more than 100 ghost towns in Angelina Country bearing names like Cheeseland, Dollarhide, Tobacco Farm, Ard, Cottage, Hamlet, Happy Hour and Yuno.