Love Bug-Bronco Orange Wood

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 31-Dec-23 this trackable had survived for 2.4 years and had been moved by 9 cachers, for an average drop every 97 days, or 3.8 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 heart-shaped items obtained from different places and converted into travel bugs. They are named either for their place of origin or for Texas Panhandle-South Plains towns with interesting names or histories. Some of the text might be mine, but most of it is lifted from the Online Handbook of Texas.

Bronco is on U.S. Highway 380 and state line road, which separates the town from its cemetery in New Mexico. The location is seventy miles southwest of Lubbock in western Yoakum County. Just two miles west of the town lies old Pueblo Springs, a watering place for Indians before Europeans came to the plains. Sulphur Draw, the headwaters of the Colorado River, originates near Bronco. In 1903 a cowpuncher, H. (Gravy) Fields, started a store at the site of the town. He succeeded in procuring a post office, but because the postal authorities rejected his first choice of a name the town remained nameless until some months later, when a traveling salesman suggested Bronco after seeing a local cowboy ride a bucking horse. K. T. Manning served as the first postmaster. By 1912 Bronco had a population of twenty-five and a store that served surrounding ranches. In 1915 L. W. Walker had established a flour mill there. A cotton gin was built at the town in 1947. Bronco's growth, like that of other Yoakum County towns, was hindered by the lack of a railroad. The reported population peaked in 1961 at an estimated 180, then by the mid-1960s fell to thirty, where it remained in 2000.