The Best Things to Do in Lufkin, Texas

The zoo exists because of a hippo. Walter Trout was given one as a Christmas present in 1965, it boarded at a Louisiana zoo until a pen was finished, and the zoo grew up around that pen and opened on June 17, 1967, named for his mother. It is owned and run by the City of Lufkin. The giraffe and white rhino exhibits date to 1999, and the hippo exhibit that followed in 2002 was built for viewing from above and below the waterline.

It is also the attraction in town that is changing fastest. A new African primate habitat with lemurs and De Brazza's monkeys opened as the first phase of a project the zoo calls Wilds of Africa, a southern white rhino named Chitabe arrived from Lion Country Safari in Florida, and a crocodile breeding center went in during 2025. The zoo had lost its Association of Zoos and Aquariums accreditation, and it was back on the list of facilities accredited in the AZA fall 2026 round.

If you only do one free thing in Lufkin, do this one. The museum opened in 1976 to hold artifacts from the Texas lumber industry, and it is the best explanation anywhere of why this part of the state looks and works the way it does. Indoor exhibits cover sawmill town history, a paper mill room, and an exhibit called Money Trees, and a children's wing has a sawmill dress-up house and a big train table.

Outside is the part people remember. There is a logging train, the Urban Wildscape Trail, and a 100-foot fire lookout tower of the type the Civilian Conservation Corps built across East Texas in the 1930s. Admission is free because donors cover it, which the museum director has described to Texas Highways as deliberate.

Dr. Neal Naranjo, a neuropsychologist who has collected fossils since childhood, started showing his collection to Lufkin students in 2006 and moved it into a permanent 10,000 square foot building in September 2012. It is a private nonprofit named for him, and it is the dinosaur stop for every family that comes through Lufkin.

The headline piece is a hadrosaur that the museum says preserves skin impressions. Around it are five dinosaur eggs, a replica Tyrannosaurus the museum named Bubba Rex after its Hell Creek Formation source, ancient coins, and dig pits where children can excavate their own fossils. The museum suggests 45 minutes to an hour, which is about right.

The core of the building is St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church, built in 1906. It was bricked over in 1929, later gutted by fire, and the congregation moved elsewhere. The state historical marker on the site calls the surviving sanctuary the oldest existing church building in Lufkin. A local service league turned the shell into a museum that opened in 1976, which makes 2026 its 50th year.

The old sanctuary is now the Chapel gallery, joined by a larger gallery, the Rotary Gallery, and a children's Discoveroom. The permanent collection runs to about 2,000 paintings and sculptures and more than 200 historical artifacts, and the touring shows change through the year. Admission is free.

The Pines opened in September 1925 in the silent film era, spent decades as the town's movie house, and was sold in the 1980s to serve as a church. It went on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. The City of Lufkin bought it in 2007, began restoring it in 2008, and reopened it in 2012. It turned 100 in September 2025 with a free celebration downtown.

The building is city owned and has been managed by the Angelina Arts Alliance since 2019. Expect roughly 450 seats, touring country acts and tribute shows, community theater, and a classic film series that has held its tickets at $5. It is the best reason to stay in Lufkin past dark.

The Azalea Trail is Lufkin's main walking and cycling connector, a little under two miles between Grace Dunne Richardson Park on Mott Drive and Kiwanis Park on South Timberland. The city lists it at 1.9 miles and TrailLink at 1.8. It has security lighting along its full length and emergency call boxes, which is more than most small city trails bother with.

Kiwanis Park at the south end covers about 22 acres and is where families with restless kids end up. It has a concrete skate park that opened in April 2017, a spray play area, a free disc golf course under mature trees, tennis and basketball courts, and a wooded north end.

This one is in Diboll, not Lufkin, and it is here anyway because it finishes the story the Forestry Museum starts. Diboll grew up as a sawmill town around the Southern Pine Lumber Company, and The History Center is its public archive and museum, with exhibits on the company, the Temple family, and the sawmill community around them.

Outside sits a restored 1920 steam locomotive and a 1948 caboose. Visitors are allowed to climb aboard, ring the fireman's bell, and blow the engineer's whistle, which is a rarer permission than it should be. Admission is free, and guided group tours are free with two weeks' notice.