Love Bug-Zulu Wood

I maintain records on my trackables. They have the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a target rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The average drop rate of my trackables in the US is 124 days, in Europe it is 71 days. As of 23-Sep-23 this trackable had survived for 7.6 years but it had been moved by only 23 cachers, for an average drop every 121 days, or 3.0 drops per year. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

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 and dry, 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.

Zulu was never really a town, but it was the first non-native gathering place in what would become Hansford County.  It was named by English brothers James and Robert Cator who in 1873, among others, were hunting buffalo.  As the buffalo were slaughtered, and the Red River Wars removed the Comanche into Indian Territory, the brothers and their sister Clara decided to try ranching. They settled in along North Palo Duro Creek and built a house. They were soon joined by others.  They named their house and store the Zulu Stockade, perhaps for the prairie resemblance to the Zulu-lands of South Africa.

In 1876 the Texas legislature marked off Hansford County but there were still so few people the new county was administered by authorities in Wheeler County.  The 1880 the United States census counted eighteen people living there.  In 1887, there was a stage stop at Hansford, on the old Tascosa-Dodge City Trail.