Bead-Rainbow Brown Stone Donut 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 for Texas towns with interesting names or histories.

Rainbow is in northeast Somervell County.  Among the first settlers was William Porter, who established a school in the late 1860s. For several decades the area was referred to as the Porter school district. By the 1890s a community had developed, and the residents requested a post office.  When the townspeople gathered to name the community a thunderstorm broke out, followed by a rainbow.  The residents, struck by the beauty of the rainbow, named their town after it.  A post office was opened in Rainbow in 1899.  By 1910 the community had half a dozen stores, a church, and a school. In the 1920s a newspaper, the Rainbow Reminder, served the estimated 113 residents.  After the 1920s the population decreased, reaching a low of forty in 1960. By 1981 the number of residents had increased to seventy-six. This growth may be due in part to the opening of nearby Dinosaur Valley State Park in the 1970s. Through 2000 the population was still reported as seventy-six.