Bead-Pyote Round Red Glass TB

Please drop this item in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Photos in the travel bug logs are appreciated.  I will be re-post them here, where they can be seen by other cachers.

This is one of a series of large beads obtained from different places and converted into travel bugs. They are named Texas towns with interesting names or histories.

Originally called Pyote Tank, the former community is on IH 20 in central Ward County.  In 1881, before the Texas and Pacific Railway laid its tracks through the area, the company opened a telegraph office at Pyote Tank. The name for the town has been credited to the Chinese railroad workers' pronunciation of coyote.  Other sources indicate it was named for the peyote cacti common to the region. 

In 1926 oil was discovered in Hendrick oilfield in nearby Winkler County.  By 1928 Pyote became the trading and shipping center for area oil activity, and its population soared to 3,500.  Thirty-one rooming houses and hotels were quickly built.  The boom ended in the 1930s when the railroad built a spur to Monahans, eliminating Pyote from oilfield shipping. In 1931 Pyote declined to a population of 1,097.  By 1941 the population was reported as 201.  In the 1980s it had a population near 400.

In 1942 Pyote Air Force Station was constructed at Pyote on land owned by the University of Texas;  it was used for bomber training.  After World War II more than 4,000 bombers and fighter planes were sent to the Pyote base for melting into scrap metal.  Among those stored there were the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb, and Swoose, General MacArthur's plane. However, those two famous planes were rescued from destruction by the Smithsonian Institution.