Site of Rehearsal Hall for The Hoo Hoo Band

Lufkin's Hoo Hoo link came through music rather than lumber. In the 1890s the Lufkin Weekly Tribune sponsored the Trib Band, which played on Cotton Square. Around 1903 Johnny Bonner, a Lufkin native living in Houston, invited it to travel with the Texas delegation to the order's international meeting in Milwaukee. The band's ragtime was a hit and it was named the order's official band. The order began January 21, 1892, when lumbermen delayed seven hours at Gurdon, Arkansas, founded a fraternity with a black cat mascot, its tail curled into a nine.

What the plaque says

Site of Rehearsal Hall for The Hoo Hoo Band At the turn of the century, a group of Lufkin men organized a town brass band. It later became known as the Hoo Hoo Band after representing Texas at a national convention of the Order of Hoo Hoo, an organization of American and Canadian lumbermen. In addition to concerts in nearby Cotton (Calder) Square, the band performed at various events and also directed such civic projects as the formation of the town's fire department. Inactive by the 1920s when school bands became popular, the Hoo Hoo Band remans a symbol of Lufkin's early civic pride and quality of life. (1982)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Caddo Mounds State Historic Site — 30 mi
  Three earthen mounds of an ancestral Caddo village and ceremonial center on the old El Camino Real, settled about A.D. 800 and still sacred to Caddo people, with a grass house and visitor center.

More markers nearby

• KRBA-AM Radio Station — steps away
• Lufkin Daily News — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Lufkin — 0.2 mi
• Site of Martin Wagon Company — 0.2 mi