Love Bug-Clarendon Red Black Gold Glass

I maintain records on my trackables. They have the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a target rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The average drop rate of my trackables in the US is 124 days, in Europe it is 71 days. As of 6-May-24 this trackable had survived for 3.8 years and has been moved by only 3 cachers, for an average drop every 456 days, or one drop every 1.3 years. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the U.S., please drop it at an event, in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban, non-premium cache. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and dry, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

This is one of a series of heart-shaped items obtained from different places and converted into travel bugs. They are named either for the places of their origin or for Texas Panhandle-South Plains towns with interesting names or histories.  

Clarendon, on U. S. Highway 287 in central Donley County, is the county seat and chief commercial and shipping center of the county. Rev. Lewis Henry Carhart, a Methodist minister, promoted the colonization of the town through a partnership with his brother-in-law, Alfred Sully, of New York. The promoters bought railroad land scrip entitling them to 343 sections of land, most of which was in Donley County. In 1878 the Clarendon Land Investment and Agency Company, an English firm, began backing Carhart. The original site of Clarendon was on a flat at the junction of Carroll Creek and the Salt Fork of the Red River. There, in the spring of 1878, Carhart and his brother-in-law, W. A. Allen, established a "Christian Colony." Although tradition maintains that Clarendon was named in honor of Carhart's wife, Clara, it has also been argued that the name was borrowed from Clarendon, England, to compliment the British backers.

The townsite was platted, and construction from such available materials as rock, adobe, and pickets began immediately. A post office was opened, and stagecoach communication with Mobeetie and Tascosa established. Supplies were freighted down the cattle trails from Dodge City. Soon Carhart and his associates attracted a substantial population. The church atmosphere in Clarendon (at one time the town had seven Methodist ministers) and the absence of bars caused the rowdier Panhandle inhabitants to call it "Saint's Roost." Indeed, the first edition of Edward E. Carhart's Clarendon News (August 2, 1879) declared the town "a sobriety settlement."