Bead-Jumbo Amber/Clear Wavy 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-23 this trackable had survived for 3.5 years and had been moved by 16 cachers, for an average drop every 81 days. 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 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.

Jumbo, off State Highway 315 seventeen miles southwest of Carthage in southwestern Panola County, was settled by planters before the Civil War. James C. Brady, who had established a gin, a store, and a gristmill there by 1885, secured a post office in 1888, the community had to suggest a name.  Remembering P.T. Barnum’s traveling circus, which made a tour by railroad through Panola and surrounding counties between 1882 and 1885, someone suggested that the community be named for one of its star attractions, Jumbo, an elephant billed by Barnum as the largest African elephant in captivity.  By 1896 the settlement had a school and Baptist and Methodist churches. The post office closed in 1912, and the mail was sent to Clayton. In the mid-1930s Jumbo had a school and a number of scattered houses. Its school was consolidated with that of Gary in the 1940s. In the early 1990s Jumbo was a dispersed rural community.