Bead-Lajitas Brown Wavy Wood TB

I maintain records on my trackables. For a US-based trackable, this one is unusual for its longevity and movement. In the six-year period, 2010-19, the owner released a total of 3,793 trackables in the United States (96%) and Europe (4%). This trackable is one of the 5% of the total that circulated for at least 5 years and had been moved at least 25 times. That is a target rate of at least 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 4-Sep-23 this trackable had survived for 6.2 years and had been moved by 25 cachers, for an average drop every 91 days. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the US, please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security. 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.

Lajitas is on the western edge of Big Bend National Park in southwestern Brewster County. It is at an altitude of 2,200 feet on a bluff overlooking the Rio Grande at the San Carlos ford of the old Comanche Trail, in the northern part of the Chihuahuan Desert and at the southern extreme of the Rocky Mountains. The name Lajitas is Spanish for "little flat rocks" and refers to the Boquillas flagstone of the area. The region was inhabited by Mexican Indians for many years. They were driven from the area by the Apaches and later by the Comanches during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Anglo-Americans first arrived in the mid-1800s.
 
In the late 1890s quicksilver (mercury) was discovered near Terlingua, eleven miles from Lajitas, and a rapid influx of people followed. At the same time a number of cattle ranches and mining enterprises appeared in northern Chihuahua and Coahuila. These activities increased commerce across the Rio Grande into Texas; consequently, by 1900 Lajitas was designated a substation port of entry. Farming along the narrow floodplain of the river served to bring in more families, and by 1912 the town had a store, a saloon, a school with fifty pupils, and a customhouse. The crossing, a smooth rock bottom all the way across the river, was the best between Del Rio and El Paso.
 
H. W. McGuirk, the leading citizen of Lajitas from 1902 to 1917, operated the store-saloon, farmed, and helped manage the Terlingua Mining Company.  He also funded the construction of a church and a school. Lajitas officially had a post office that was sporadically open after 1901, but closed permanently in 1939. McGuirk sold his holdings to Thomas Skaggs, who continued farming. Skaggs also became successful in a candelilla wax business, the Lajitas Wax Company.  In 1916 the interruption of commerce by Pancho Villa's bandits brought Gen. John Pershing's troops to Lajitas, where they established a major cavalry post. In the 1980s a motel stood on the actual foundations of the post.
 
The Lajitas property continued to change hands.  At present it is touted as a resort town with fifty residents and fifteen businesses. The old church had been restored, and there were three motels, a hotel, a restaurant, a golf course, a swimming pool, an RV park, and an airstrip. Just east of town was the Lajitas Museum, a large, modern building containing artifacts of the Big Bend area. The old trading post remained open.   To this observer the region is too remote to attract enough visitors to pay the overhead.
 
The writer’s first visit to Lajitas was at night, in the company of a herpetologist who was going to a location near the town having an unusual concentration of copperhead snakes.  If such can be said of a poisonous snake, the Trans-Pecos Copperhead is gorgeous.  Anyway, at a brush-covered seep, the snakes were everywhere, in the water and resting on low-hanging branches.  Lighted by flashlights, it was right out of a horror movie.  We assumed the snakes were feeding on the tadpoles, toads and frogs in the water.  Sadly (for me at least) the site was destroyed in the development of the resort.