Texas Forestry Museum

The Texas Forestry Museum at 1905 Atkinson Drive in Lufkin opened in 1976 as a home for artifacts from the Texas lumber industry's heyday, which Texas Highways dates from the 1880s to the 1930s. The Texas Forestry Association led the push for a museum in the late 1950s and early 1960s, according to ETX Life. The museum is small, two acres, and its director told Texas Highways it is a tiny museum with a lot of big things.

Inside, the exhibits cover sawmill towns, where lumberjacks lived a century ago, and the Southland paper mill in Lufkin and how trees became products. Timber technology includes an oxen-powered, high-wheeled log cart, an antique U.S. Forest Service pickup and a steam engine built by the Houston, Stanwood and Gamble Company of Cincinnati. There is a turn-of-the-century locomotive and depot. ETX Life adds a Timber Town area with pioneer clothing, an exhibit on early employer-funded medical care, and more than 28,000 items in the collection.

Outside stands a 100-foot fire tower built in 1936 and moved from the Conroe area. A tenth-of-a-mile urban wildlife trail has an earth kitchen, a nature playscape and a weaving wall. Indoor exhibits are free, and hours are listed as Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 936-632-9535 to confirm.