Metal-De Soto Gold Laser Cut Pendant TB

This trackable has the modest goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days.  

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, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

Trackable photos are appreciated and will be re-posted here.

While I have lived in Texas for nearly 50 years, I was born and grew to an adult in Kansas.  When I tell someone of my origins, they almost always respond in one of two ways:  “I have been there but I don’t remember much about it” or “that 400 mile drive across the state on Interstate 70 is really boring.”  There is more to the state than that.  The wheat grown there feeds the world, and the people are nice.  I watch for items I can convert to travel bugs.  Some some metal beads having a raised letter on the face were encountered and each bead was named for a Kansas town whose name starts with the letter on the face of the bead.  The towns remembered either have a connection to my youth or have an interesting name or history.

De Soto is a city in Johnson, Leavenworth and Wyandotte counties.  It was named for sixteenth-century Spanish explorer, Hernando De Soto. He was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula, and played an important role in Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, but is best known for leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States (through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and most likely Arkansas). He is the first European documented as having crossed the Mississippi River

The town of De Soto was founded in 1857, on 80 acres sold by John and Hattie Possum, Shawnee Indians.  It was a sleepy little town in the Kansas River valley until WWII.  With the construction of the 9,080 acre Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant south of De Soto, the population boomed.. In May 1943, The Kansas City Star article reported "a town rapidly growing, with a population increase from 400 to 1,000 persons in under a year". This sudden overflow in population put a great strain on housing and other resources in the city; however, many original residents prospered during this time, buying property and starting new businesses. Production flowed steadily at the Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant until the plant went on standby in March 1948, with small scale production following shortly after until its closure in 1993. It is now part of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area.