Love Bug-Dumas Yellow Acrylic Outline

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 27-Sep-24 this trackable had survived for 2.2 years and had been moved by 15 cachers, for an average drop every 54 days, or 6.8 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 for Texas Panhandle-South Plains towns with interesting names or histories. Much of the text comes from the online Texas Almanac or texasescapes.com.

Dumas, the county seat of Moore County, is at the junction of U.S. highways 87 and 287 in the center of the county. It was named for Louis Dumas, president of the Panhandle Townsite Company in Sherman, who purchased railroad survey lands in the panhandle. In January 1891 Dumas and his associates formed the Moore County Townsite Company and platted the town on a site some five miles south of South Palo Duro Creek. A plague of grasshoppers in the summer of 1893 and a severe winter during 1893–94 almost reduced Dumas to a ghost town. Even Louis Dumas gave up hope and moved back to Grayson County. At times during the next few years only one family was reported as inhabiting the townsite. In 1900 Arthur Nield's mercantile store was the sole business in operation.

When the Enid, Ochiltree and Western Railroad announced plans to build through Dumas, the population increased from twenty-three in 1903 to over 100 by 1915. Though that railroad scheme fell through, Dumas grew to around 200 and had a blacksmith shop, a barbershop, a lumberyard, a drugstore, and other businesses serving area ranchers and wheat farmers. After cotton was introduced to the county in 1918, a gin was opened in Dumas. The determination of the Dumas residents to stay in their windswept environment paid off when oil and natural gas were discovered in the county in 1926. The population grew rapidly as Shamrock Oil and Gas and other major companies moved into the vicinity. In 1931 the long-awaited hopes for a railroad were realized with the building of the North Plains and Santa Fe line from Amarillo to Boise City, Oklahoma. In 1990 the population was 12,871, and in 2000 it was 13,747.

Dumas was made semi-famous by the hit song "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas," recorded by Phil Harris in the 1940s. The song was written by Phil Baxter of Navarro County after he had spent a night in Dumas on a trip to Denver.