The city is situated in Deep East Texas and is 60 mi (97 km) west of the Texas- Louisiana state line.

Three businessmen founded Angelina Lumber Company, which led to much of the economic prosperity Lufkin later enjoyed.

In the mid-1960s, a cultural expansion began, and improvements were made to education and the way of life, including museums and the opening of a new library.

According to legend, the men in the surveying team began to get rowdy in the saloon in Homer, which led to their arrest.

This legend is most likely not true since the prospectus in 1879 already had the railroad planned to bypass Homer and go through the future site of Lufkin.

[6] The railroad officially arrived in 1882, and the company began to advertise the sale of lots of land in Lufkin.

During this time, many of the businesses and professionals from Homer began to relocate to Lufkin to be closer to the railroad.

The town continued to grow, and acquired a post office in 1882 with William A. Abney as postmaster.

Three main lumbering families are recognized for much of the economic prosperity in Lufkin – the Kurths, the Hendersons, and the Wieners.

Joseph H. Kurth Sr., was a German immigrant, who had operated a sawmill in Polk County, Texas.

The company became the forerunner of the lumber industry in East Texas, and led to much of the economic prosperity in Lufkin.

In the late 1930s, two of the principal industries in Lufkin, the Southland Paper Mill, later known as Abitibi Bowater Inc. which closed in 2007,[7] and Texas Foundries opened.

Improvements included the Kurth Memorial Library, new museums, a civic center, Angelina College, a new federal building, a country club, municipal and city parks, two shopping malls, and the Lufkin Independent School District.

[6] Debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster fell over the Lufkin area on February 1, 2003.

According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2019, the city has a total area of 34.48 sq mi (89.3 km2).

[1] Lufkin is at the crossroads of East Texas at the intersections of Highways US 59, future Interstate 69, which leads to Houston and the Rio Grande Valley to the south and Nacogdoches and Texarkana to the north, and US 69, which leads from the Golden Triangle of southeast Texas (Port Arthur and Beaumont) to points such as Jacksonville, Tyler, Dallas, and Oklahoma to the north.

Lufkin is a humid subtropical climate that generally has relatively high temperatures with evenly distributed precipitation throughout the year.

During summer, these regions over low-latitude ocean waters are generally under the influence of hot, maritime overflow from the western side of subtropical anticyclonic cells.

It is also home to the Atkinson Candy Company, the creator of the Chick-O-Stick, and Brookshire Brothers, a chain of grocery stores in Texas and Louisiana.

[24] Lufkin falls under Texas's 17th congressional district,[25] which is currently represented by Republican Pete Sessions.

[27] In the Texas Senate Lufkin falls under district 3 and is represented by Republican Robert Nichols.

[33] According to the United States Census Bureau 80.7% of people in Lufkin above the age of 25 are high-school graduates or higher.

It has an approximate length of 20 miles (32 km) and connects with the Union Pacific Railroad lines.