Bead-Cometa Brown Speckled Donut TB

I maintain records on my trackables. They have the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by more than 25 cachers. That is a target rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The past average drop rate of my trackables in US is 124 days, in Europe it is 71 days. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

If in the US, 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. I have small to large connections to most of them, having visited or worked nearby.

Cometa is ten miles west of Crystal City in far southwestern Zavala County. The Cometa area was the location of prehistoric Indian encampments and Spanish campsites; one such campsite was called the Loma de Cometas by Spanish transportation agents. With spring water, a large natural lake, free-roaming cattle, and fertile soil, land in the Cometa area was much sought after immediately after the Civil War.

Cattlemen ranched the Cometa area throughout the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Around 1885 T. A. Coleman established his ranch headquarters on Cometa hill. The ranch brand was in the shape of a comet, called cometa by the Mexican ranchhands. The county's first schoolhouse was constructed by teacher George Herman in 1885 near Cometa; twenty-five students attended that year. The schoolhouse also served the community as church and community center. Methodists, Baptists, and members of the Church of Christ used the facility. In the early 1890s Coleman constructed a building that served as the general store and later the post office.

By 1900, 16 percent of Zavala County's population resided in the Cometa area. A post office was established in the community in 1905 with B. H. Erskine as postmaster. At that time Cometa farmers used artesian wells to irrigate small farms that produced watermelons, pumpkins, and tomatoes. Although harvests were bountiful, Cometa's farmers discovered that their produce spoiled in transit by oxcart and mulewagons to distant markets such as Eagle Pass.

In the early 1900s Thomas Edison and later the Edison Institute contracted with several Cometa farmers to grow experimental crops, including soybeans and guayule for use in the manufacture of various rubbers and plastics. The area was replete with registered and purebred stock, including Durham cattle, Duroc Jersey hogs, Hampshires, brown Leghorn chickens, thoroughbreds, and quarter horses. By 1920, however, Cometa was declining; the post office was discontinued in 1919, and the general store closed several years later. In 2000 the population was ten.