Metal-Hunnewell Silver Butterfly TB

This travel bug has the modest goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers.  As of 22-Aug-19 it had survived for 3.0 years and had been moved by 9 cachers.

Please drop it 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, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Travel bug photos are appreciated and will be re-posted here.

While I have lived in Texas for nearly 50 years, I was born and grew to an adult in Kansas.  When I tell someone of my origins, they almost always respond in one of two ways:  “I have been there but I don’t remember much about it” or “that 400 mile drive across the state on Interstate 70 is really boring.”  There is more to the state than that.  The wheat grown there feeds the world, and the people are nice, but I will focus on the sometimes lawless history of the state.

Kansas achieved statehood in 1861, but it was far from civilized.  From 1850 until 1900 the region was a frontier, and at the center of important events in US history:  there was the westward movement of pioneers from Europe and the eastern US and the subsequent conflicts with Native Americans; the Santa Fe Trail crossed the state and the Pony Express and the Oregon Trail passed through a corner; there was a border war because Kansas was a free state and a center of the abolitionist movement, whereas neighboring Missouri was a slave state; and finally the several new railroads were extending westward into hostile territory and furthermore some of the railheads were the destinations of cattle drives from Texas.  Each trackable in this series of metal travel bugs is named for towns with interesting histories (at least to me), some of which have connections to my youth.

In the 1880s, Hunnewell flourished briefly as a shipping point for Texas cattle. Located on the Kansas- Oklahoma border in Sumner County, the Leavenworth, Lawrence and Galveston Railroad provided quick access to the Kansas City stockyards.  Typical of cowtowns, the business district of Hunnewell reportedly consisted of one hotel, two stores, one barbershop, a couple of dance halls, and eight or nine saloons.  Also typical was that violence was not uncommon and was the site of the Hunnewell Gunfight in 1884. Though the town never grew very large, it dwindled with the loss of the cattle trade.  Today it only has about 80 residents.

In the 1880's, when the cowtowns in Kansas thrived with beef being shipped to the east, the small town of During Hunnewell's heydays, it sported one hotel, two stores, a barbershop, a couple of dance halls, and eight or nine saloons.  With little more than railroad workers and cowboys, violence was not at all uncommon.  As one railroad worker recollected years later, "There was no Bat Masterson to control the casual use of firearms, and there was more shooting than I ever saw in Dodge City."  It was during this time (1884) that two cowboys, Oscar Halsell and Clem Barfoot, were rowdy in Hanley's Saloon.  Two lawmen walked into the saloon and tried to quiet the disturbance, gunfire erupted.  Before the incident was over, some of Hunnewell's citizens were involved in the gunfight.  Barfoot died of his wounds a few days later, as did Deputy Ed Scottin.