Lufkin, TX
Pure East Texas eating. Greasy, tasty burgers and sandwiches, and ladies who call you 'Sugar' when taking your order. Consistently voted one of the best burger spots in the area. Down-home as it gets.
Lufkin sits in the Piney Woods of East Texas — a landscape of towering loblolly pines that looks nothing like the stereotypical Texas prairie. The region was the heart of Texas lumber industry in the late 1800s. The Texas Forestry Museum in town preserves this heritage. From the air, the transition from post-oak savanna to dense pine forest is dramatic.
On January 10, 1901, the Lucas Gusher at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont erupted with a force that shot oil 150 feet in the air, producing 100,000 barrels per day — more than all other oil wells in the US combined. It blew for nine days before being capped. That single well launched the modern petroleum industry, made Texas an energy superpower, and fueled the creation of Gulf Oil, Texaco, and Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil). A replica derrick and the Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum mark the site. From the air, the low dome of Spindletop Hill is barely visible — hard to believe this gentle rise changed the course of world history.
The San Jacinto Monument is the tallest stone column memorial in the world at 567 feet — 15 feet taller than the Washington Monument. It marks the site where Sam Houston's Texian Army defeated Santa Anna on April 21, 1836, winning Texas independence from Mexico in a battle lasting just 18 minutes. The Battleship Texas (BB-35), the last surviving dreadnought battleship, is moored nearby. From the air, the monument's distinctive star-topped column is visible from miles across the flat Houston Ship Channel industrial landscape — a monument to revolution surrounded by refineries.
Caddo Lake is the only natural lake in Texas (every other lake in the state is man-made). The lake was formed by a massive log jam on the Red River in the early 1800s — though legend credits an earthquake. From the air, Caddo Lake looks nothing like a typical lake: it's a maze of bayous, sloughs, and cypress-lined channels draped in Spanish moss. The ancient bald cypress trees standing in the water create patterns that look more like Louisiana swamp than Texas. The lake straddles the Texas-Louisiana border and is one of the most ecologically significant wetlands in the South.
The Lone Star Flight Museum sits at the western edge of Ellington Field, on the site of one of America's last surviving WWI air training bases. The collection began in 1985 as a private holding of restored warbirds by Houston funeral magnate Robert Waltrip; it opened to the public at Galveston's Scholes Field in 1990. In September 2017 the museum moved into a new $38 million, 130,000 sq ft facility next to Ellington — closer to its airshow audiences and on an active military/commercial/NASA flightline. The flying collection includes a B-17 Flying Fortress, B-25 Mitchell, DC-3, P-47 Thunderbolt, F4U Corsair, SBD Dauntless, TBM Avenger, T-6 Texan, and Stearman trainer — all still airworthy. Rides are sold in the B-17, B-25, and T-6. The Texas Aviation Hall of Fame, established by the Texas Legislature in 1995, lives in the building. Its 100+ inductees include Bessie Coleman, Wiley Post, Howard Hughes, Eisenhower, both Bush presidents, the Tuskegee Airmen, the WASPs, the Doolittle Raiders, and astronauts Eileen Collins, Joe Engle, and Gene Cernan.