The city is named for Abraham P. Lufkin, a cotton merchant and Galveston city councilman. Lufkin was the father-in-law of Paul Bremond, president of the Houston, East and West Texas Railway which developed the town.

In 1906 while living in Lufkin, writer Katherine Anne Porter married her first husband John Henry Koontze in a double ring ceremony that also had her sister Gay Porter marry T.H. Holloway. The minister who presided over the ceremony was Rev. Ira Bryce, serving at the time at Lufkin’s First Methodist Church.

In 1907, Allan Shivers, the 37th Governor of Texas, was born in Lufkin. He served as governor from 1949 to 1957.

Debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster fell over the Lufkin area on February 1, 2003.

Lufkin celebrated its 125th anniversary in October 2007.

A Little League Baseball team from Lufkin known as The Thundering 13 won the U.S. Championship at the 2017 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The team finished as runners-up in the tournament behind a team from Tokyo, Japan.