WODEN, TX

WODEN, TEXAS. Woden is on Farm Road 226 approximately eleven miles southeast of Nacogdoches in southern Nacogdoches County. The area was settled in the 1830s by immigrants from the Old South. The community was known for a time as Jacobs and later as King's Store. A post office was established in 1886, and the name was changed to Woden, after the father of the Teutonic gods. In the early 1890s the Haywood Lumber Company built a railroad through the area which bypassed the town. Townspeople moved the community to the tracks a few miles away. In 1892 a post office opened at the new site under the name Oval, but in 1895 the name was changed back to Woden. The town prospered as a lumbering center and by 1914 had three general stores and an estimated population of 200. The collapse of the lumber industry during the 1930s, however, began a gradual decline. In the mid-1930s Woden had Baptist, Church of Christ, and United Pentacostal churches, a large high school, and three businesses; the population in 1936 was 100. In 1990 the population was seventy. Many of the residents worked in Nacogdoches or Lufkin. In the early 2000s Woden supported farms and other agricultural businesses in the area, along with two schools. By 2004 the town had an estimated population of 400 with ten businesses.