Redland

Redland is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 59 and Farm Road 2021, five miles north of Lufkin in northwest Angelina County. The site was the intersection of the Bedias Road, a trade route from the lower Texas coast to Nacogdoches, and the Cherokee Road, which ran east to west and served Anglo settlers as a trade route to Cherokee County. Redland was settled before the Civil War and was named for the soil color of the ridge that forms the center of the community. A sawmill built before the Civil War was powered by a local stream and provided rough lumber for some of the earliest frame buildings in the county. This mill, also a gristmill, was the first one in Angelina County and was located four miles north of Lufkin on Mill Creek, on what in 1986 was the John Winston ranch. It was built in 1853 and operated by Dickey White and a slave named Berry Roberts. Mill Creek got its name from the mill. Redland remained a lumbering center for over 100 years, as the Lankford family continued to run a sawmill there until 1969. Community life centered around a school that began as a one-room log cabin sometime after the Civil War, was transferred into a frame building in 1903, and was replaced by a brick building in 1914–15. Other brick buildings were added during the 1930s. In 1970 the Redland school system was merged with that of Lufkin. In 1914, when the brick school was built, the one-room frame building was used for church services. In 1928 Eliza "Grandma" Russell gave the Methodists an acre of land on which to build a church. In 1939 the Liberty Redland Baptist Church members dismantled a building in Diboll and rebuilt it in Redland. In 1956 the Redland Baptist church was built at its present location on land bought from Fannie Atkinson. Around 1900 Redland was known for bootleg whiskey production for which nearby Whiskey Creek was named. The Gulf Pipe Line pump station for many years provided jobs and much-needed tax revenues for the Redland area. In 1933 the population of Redland was estimated at twenty-five. In 1936 it was 700. The community receives its mail from Lufkin. In 1990 Redland was still listed. In 2000 the population was 250.