Love Bug-Gray Mule Small Filigreed

This trackable has the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days.  As of 28-Feb-21 it had survived for 264 days and had been moved by 3 cachers, for an average release every 88 days.

No permission is needed to leave the U.S.  While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, 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.  

Grey Mule was just north of Long Hollow Creek about thirty-five miles northeast of Floydada in northeastern Floyd County, just below the Caprock. In the early 1900s a community developed around a school that was first called Goodnight. About 1918 the school was moved. Since the new school site was in an area where mules were used for many farming operations, area baseball teams began to call the school Grey Mule. The Fort Worth and Denver Railway established the Edgin station there in 1927, supposedly for an "edge in" the Caprock. In 1929 the switch included several maintenance buildings as well as stock pens and a gravel platform. By the early 1930s businesses at Grey Mule included a cotton gin, store, cafe, boardinghouse, blacksmith shop, and gravel pit. The local mail came from Quitaque. The community's population around this time was estimated at 100. The Edgin school, established in the late 1920s, also served as a church and community center. Grey Mule prospered during the 1920s and 1930s, but local business collapsed during the Great Depression. By the late 1940s Grey Mule was completely abandoned. Nothing remained at the site in the mid-1980s but the Edgin railroad switch and a cemetery.  The cemetery is still active.