Bead-Cain City Red Mother of Pearl 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 14-Feb-25 this trackable had survived for 1.6 years and had been moved by 6 cachers, for an average drop every 99 days, or 3.7 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.

A few road and street signs are all that's left of Cain City, a commercial center and resort town once known to thousands, now all but forgotten.

Cain City began as the dream of an ambitious Kansas businessman and promoter named Joseph Stinson. In 1913 Stinson, then living in San Antonio, heard about a railroad being built from Comfort to Fredericksburg. He traveled the proposed route looking for a place to build his dream city, and in the hills 6 miles south of Fredericksburg, he found it.

Stinson purchased 324 acres on a rise overlooking the Pedernales Valley. The country to the west, extending down through Stonewall and Hye, was then and still is the most productive farming region in Gillespie County. Stinson envisioned his city as the shipping point for Pedernales Valley produce.

The name of Stinson's city came from a fundraising contest. The railroad company promised to name a community along the route after the person who raised the most money for the project, and Charley Cain, manager of the Peden Iron and Steel Works of San Antonio, was that person. Stinson's dream town became Cain City.

By 1914, a year after the Fredericksburg & Northern Railroad came through, Cain City had a depot, a general store, a lumber yard, a two-story hotel, a filling station, and a farm produce warehouse. The bank came along in 1917 followed by a drug store, a barber shop, and a dancehall. There was a telephone exchange, a post office, a blacksmith shop, and a church that doubled as a school.

Then a curious thing happened. Wealthy Texans, looking to escape the crowded streets of San Antonio and smelly air of Houston, discovered Cain City. They caught the train to the Hill Country and "summered" at the Mountain Home Hotel.

But its glory days were brief. By 1920 automobiles and improved roads gave Cain City consumers quick and easy access to Fredericksburg with bigger stores and a greater variety of goods and services. As business slowly evaporated, Cain City was caught in an unfavorable economic cycle, and the drop in business and population became a steady and irreversible trend.