Bead-Shafter Brown Wood TB

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

Medium Wood Focal.  While the TB owner lives on the Southern High Plains in the Panhandle of northwest Texas, he has spent considerable time in what many Texans would call Far West Texas.  It remains a favorite part of the state.  Much of it is the Chihuahuan Desert.  In the desert are remotes outposts of civilization and even mountains that rise high enough to harbor junipers and pines.  This travel bug commemorates a favorite place in the region, partly because the history and partly because of memories.

Shafter is an unincorporated community in Presidio County.  Tucked in the Chinati Mountains on Cibola Creek, eighteen miles north of Presidio.  Shafter was once a bustling mining town with a population as high as 4,000. That was in 1940.  Now the population is reported at various times to be between 10 and 30. 
 
In 1882 John Spencer found silver near this location. He and William B. Shafter, who at the time was a Colonel with the 9th Cavalry.  When an assay commissioned by Colonel Shafter confirmed profitable amounts of silver were in Spencer's ore samples, he brought in two of his military associates, Lt. John L. Bullis and Lt. Louis Wilhelmi, to join the venture. 
Lacking sufficient capital to develop the project on their own, the partners leased a portion of their holdings to a mining group from California which had both the money and expertise to proceed. In 1883, this group established the Presidio Mining Company. 
 
A settlement began to grow around the mining operation.  A post office opened in 1885 and took the name "Shafter" after the colonel.  Company housing was provided for the miners, company stores provided their staples and a company doctor provided medical care.  In the early 1900s six silver mines were in operation near Shafter.
 
In 1928 the mines were sold to the American Metal Company, but operations continued unabated for another 12 years or more.  Then, in the 1940s, faced with increased production costs, a shortage of miners and an attempt to unionize those who were employed, the American Metal Company simply shut down the operation.  Between 1883 and 1940 the mines produced some 2,020,375.92 tons of lead and 30,972,286.15 ounces of silver, along with profits of $18,000,000.  When the mines closed the town died.
 
Given rising values for precious metals and modern mining and processing techniques, the little town may well live again.  As of 2012, at least one silver mine, La Mina Grande, has been reopened by Aurcana Corporation. 
 
Having seen the movie Andromeda Strain, the writer and a friend took photographs of the church, cemetery and the quaint little suspension bridge over the creek.  We also explored and photographed the stone buildings on the west side of Hwy 67.