Bead-Blue Blue Stone Donut TB

I maintain records on my trackables. For a US-based trackable, this one is unusual for its longevity and movement. In the six-year period, 2010-19, the owner released a total of 3,793 trackables in the United States (96%) and Europe (4%). This trackable is one of the 5% of the total that circulated for at least 5 years and had been moved at least 25 times. That is a target rate of at least 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 14-Apr-24 this trackable had survived for 7.8 years and had been moved by 25 cachers, for an average drop every 113 days, or 3.2 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 at an event, in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban, non-premium cache. 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 large beads obtained from different places and converted into travel bugs.  They are named for Texas towns with interesting names or histories.  Much of the text is from the online Handbook of Texas or texasescapes.com.

The site of Blue, on Farm Road 696 eight miles west of Lexington in northwestern Lee County, was first settled around 1846 by three brothers, Joseph, William, and Isaac Jackson, who received a one-third league grant for service in the Mexican War.  The settlement was originally named Blue Branch after a nearby stream.  There was no surface water in the community so the brothers went to Wooly Branch and dug a canal to power a mill - the first west of the Brazos.  They are also credited with building a horse-powered cotton gin just north of the settlement.

For a period, the town harbored a band of six local outlaws.  Five citizens were shot in a short span of time.  The honorable citizens knew who the assassins were; four were caught and hung from the same tree.  The other two of the gang escaped and were never seen again.

A local post office was established in 1879. The same year, a Methodist church was organized there, and a cotton gin was operating at about the same time.  William Jackson operated a small chair factory. The community's post office closed in 1895 but was reopened in 1897, and the name of the settlement was shortened to Blue.  In 1906 a one-room school at Blue had thirty-three students. The settlement began to decline after 1910.  Its post office closed in 1913, and its school was consolidated with the Lexington Independent School District in 1941.  In the mid-1930s the town had a school, a business, and several scattered dwellings. In 1945 its reported population was twenty-five. In the early 1980s the town was a dispersed rural community with a church and one business. The population was fifty in 2000.