Love Bug-Matador Gold Large Acrylic

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 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.  

Matador is a town in and the county seat of Motley County.] The population was 740 at the 2000 census. In 1891, it was established by and named for the Matador Ranch.  The Matador Ranch was consolidated in 1882 by a Scottish syndicate, and a post office opened in 1886.  At the end of the 19th century, townspeople freed the community from domination by the Matador Ranch, which was liquidated in 1951, by relocating non-ranch families there and electing their own slate of officials.  The community was incorporated in 1912 and made the county seat. The state required that a town have at least twenty businesses. Local ranch hands established fraudulent, temporary businesses using ranch supplies.  The only real business in Matador at the time was a saloon.  Matador’s highest population, 1,302, was reached in 1940.
 
Matador was also the home of Bob Robertson, a promoter without peer in his time.  In the 1930s he opened a service station which he topped with a oil derrick.  He advertised his business in unusual ways, having maintained a cage of live rattlesnakes for the amusement of tourists. He later added a small zoo of lions, monkeys, coyotes, and a white buffalo.  He paid long-distance truckers to place signs at strategic points across the United States.  The signs noted the mileage to Bob's Oil Well in Matador.  Robertson soon expanded his operation to include a grocery store, cafe and garage.  Robertson died in 1947, two weeks before a high wind toppled the derrick that had been his trademark.  The original building is still there and there is a cache at the site.