Angelina County Texas map
31.25° N · 94.61° W · County seat: Lufkin · 865 sq mi
Angelina County is the one Texas county usually said to be named for a woman: Angelina, a Hainai woman who interpreted for Spanish missionaries on the Neches in the 1690s and whom they called the little angel. The county sits inside a bend of two rivers that carry the same story — the Neches down its western side, the Angelina across its north — and the timber cut between them built Lufkin.
Lufkin sits near the middle on US-59. The southeastern quarter of the map is the Angelina National Forest and the western arms of Sam Rayburn Reservoir; the Neches River is the ragged western boundary.
Where Angelina County is
The county was cut from Nacogdoches County in 1846, one of the first batch of counties the new state organised. Its eight neighbours run clockwise from Nacogdoches County on the north to San Augustine County northeast, Jasper County southeast across Sam Rayburn, Tyler County south, Polk County southwest, Houston County and Trinity County west across the Neches, and Cherokee County northwest.
Lufkin is about 24 miles south of Nacogdoches on US-59, 86 miles southeast of Tyler and 86 miles northwest of Beaumont. Houston is the nearest metropolitan area, roughly 120 road miles southwest on US-59. Of the 865 square miles, 67 are water — almost all of it Sam Rayburn.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | Population (2020) |
|---|---|---|
| Lufkin (county seat) | City | 34,143 |
| Diboll | City | 4,880 |
| Hudson | City | 4,853 |
| Huntington | City | 2,078 |
| Burke | City | 692 |
| Zavalla | City | 599 |
All six incorporated places lie in the middle third of the county, strung along the two US highways. Hudson and Burke are effectively suburbs of Lufkin; Diboll, 11 miles south on US-59, grew as a company sawmill town; Zavalla, 17 miles southeast of Lufkin on SH-147, is the last town before the reservoir and the national forest.
Roads
- US-59 / I-69 – the main north–south route, entering from Nacogdoches, passing east of downtown Lufkin on the freeway loop and continuing through Diboll toward Livingston and Houston. Sections are being rebuilt to interstate standard as I-69.
- US-69 – comes in from the northwest out of Rusk and Alto, joins US-59 through Lufkin, then splits southeast for Zavalla, Woodville and Beaumont.
- SH-103 – east from Lufkin across the Angelina River arm toward San Augustine.
- SH-147 – southeast from Lufkin through Zavalla to the Sam Rayburn dam crossing and on to Broaddus.
- SH-94 – northwest from Lufkin toward Groveton and Trinity.
- SH-7 and SH-63 – the two east–west county routes, SH-7 crossing the north end through Central and SH-63 running along the south side of the reservoir.
- Loop 287 – the ring road around Lufkin, which carries the through traffic of both US highways.
Sam Rayburn Reservoir and the Angelina National Forest
The Angelina River is dammed downstream in Jasper County as Sam Rayburn Reservoir, the largest reservoir lying entirely within Texas. Its long western arms reach back into Angelina County below Zavalla and account for most of the county's 67 square miles of water. The Angelina National Forest wraps the lake on both shores and spreads into Jasper, Nacogdoches and San Augustine counties; the Angelina County share covers the ground between SH-147, SH-63 and the water, including the Caney Creek and Sandy Creek recreation areas.
Bass tournaments and the Corps of Engineers boat ramps are the visible use of the lake, but the forest around it is also working timberland with a long rotation of loblolly and longleaf pine.
Timber, paper and pumping units
Angelina County's economy has run on pine since the railroads reached it in the 1880s. Diboll was built around the sawmills of the Southern Pine Lumber Company, and the archive that company left behind is kept in the town today. Lufkin's paper mill, opened in 1940, was the plant that proved newsprint could be made from southern pine rather than northern spruce, and it remains one of the county's largest employers.
The other Lufkin industry is metal: Lufkin Industries, founded in 1902 to build sawmill machinery, moved into oilfield pumping units and its walking-beam pumpjacks are used in oil fields worldwide. Angelina College, the county's two-year college, sits on the south side of Lufkin off US-59.