Bead-Okra Black Glass Oval TB

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 26-May-24 this trackable had survived for 6.9 years but it had been moved by only 12 cachers, for an average drop every 211 days, or 1.7 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.

Okra, in south central Eastland County, was named for the vegetable.  Settlement began in 1880 on lands made available by the Texas and Pacific Railway.  The post office was established in 1899, and a gin was built a year later.  The population was fifty in 1914, forty in 1940, and twenty in 1980 through 2000.  Tiny Okra has both "city limits" signs are on the same post.

By the 1920s the town had a cotton gin, a public school and teacherage, two churches, and a number of stores and businesses.  During Prohibition, the countryside along the Colorado River south of Whon was a popular hideout for bootleggers.   As small-scale cotton farming in the area decreased, the community began to decline.  In 1940 Whon had a store, a post office, and sixty people; by 1949 the population had dropped to thirty.  The post office, which had become a unique drive-in facility in 1961, was still operating in the 1980s.  At one time Whon was thought to be at the exact center of the state, until a surveyor's error of ten miles was discovered.  Through 2000 the population was still reported at fifteen.