Clawson

Clawson is at the junction of U.S. Highway 69 and Farm Road 2021, six miles northwest of Lufkin in northwestern Angelina County. The St. Louis Southwestern Railway runs through the community, which was originally established as a sawmill town in the 1880s and became a rail shipping point around 1890. Clawson was named for the manager of the first mill built there, T. W. Clawson. The mill property was subsequently sold to Jack Caruthers, who built a larger sawmill on the site. Around 1890 Clawson had a large commissary for general merchandise, a post office, a church, a school, and tenant houses for the employees of the mill. Although Caruthers went bankrupt, a number of other lumber companies have operated mills in the vicinity of Clawson. The lumber manufacturer Grambling and Clark was listed there in 1902. Early in the twentieth century the Henderson Sand and Lumber Company operated a mill there. At the same time, two of Jack Caruthers's sons built a new mill near Clawson called the Pine Island Lumber Company. In 1907 the Caruthers brothers sold their mill to J. M. Burnett and Ashley Stroud. Shortly thereafter, Burnett and Stroud sold the property to J. H. Bivins and E. E. Blythe. Sawmilling at Clawson ended around 1911 when Bivins and Blythe went out of business.

Before 1904 Clawson had fewer than 100 people, but it did list a money order post office that year. By 1910, at the height of its prosperity as a mill center, it had grown to 250. In 1914 and 1915 the population was listed as 150, and the town had telephone service. In 1925 the population was still listed as 150, and from the end of the 1960s through 2000 it was reported as 195. Since 1926 Clawson has been receiving its mail from Lufkin.