DURANT, TEXAS. Durant, two miles northwest of Clawson in northwestern Angelina County, was the last sawmill town established in the county on the Cotton Belt line (officially known as the St. Louis Southwestern Railway). Around 1909 Louis C. Odum built a small mill at the site on the railway; Durant was often referred to as Odum's Town because Odum was not only a sawmill owner but also a county commissioner and the first postmaster at the community. The local post office opened in 1909 and was closed in 1915. Durant was named for the Durant Lumber Company, which at one time operated a mill there. From 1909 to 1915 the town served as a shipping point for lumber and farm goods. In 1912 Odum sold his sawmill to Arch Carraway, who moved a mill to a site near Durant from Nacogdoches County. Carraway went out of business when the area timber supply was exhausted, and the community subsequently declined. The population of Durant was listed as five in 1910 and twenty-five in 1920. In 1945 the settlement had one business and a population of twenty-five. The population was again reported as twenty-five in 1965. By the late 1980s Durant was an abandoned railroad station.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Angelina County Historical Survey Committee, Land of the Little Angel: A History of Angelina County, Texas, ed. Bob Bowman (Lufkin, Texas: Lufkin Printing, 1976). Archie Birdsong Mathews, The Economic Development of Angelina County (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1952).

Megan Biesele