Angelina County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. It is in East Texas and its county seat is Lufkin.
As of the 2020 census, the population was 86,395. The Lufkin, TX Micropolitan Statistical Area includes all of Angelina County.
It was formed in 1846 from Nacogdoches County. It is named for a Hasinai Native American woman who assisted early Spanish missionaries and was called Angelina by them.
History
The county's first Anglo settlers were what John Nova Lomax described as "Scotch-Irish backwoods folk." Cotton farmers and slaves did not come to Angelina County because it had poor soil. Lomax added that "Culturally, the county was less moonlight-and-magnolias Dixie than a little pocket of Appalachia, where pioneers, often from similarly hardscrabble areas of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, wanted nothing more than to carve homesteads out of the Piney Woods and river thickets, farm a little, maybe raise a scraggly herd of tough cattle to drive to market in New Orleans."
Geography
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (7.7%) is water.
Adjacent counties
- Nacogdoches County (north)
- San Augustine County (northeast)
- Jasper County (southeast)
- Tyler County (south)
- Polk County (southwest)
- Trinity County (west)
- Houston County (west)
- Cherokee County (northwest)
National protected area
- Angelina National Forest (part)