Bead-Fly Gap Multifloral Glass TB

Please drop this item in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  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 travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Travel bug photos are appreciated and will be re-posted here.

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.

Fly Gap is in northeastern Mason County.  According to legend, the community got its name from an incident involving a band of settlers who were pursuing some Indians as they retreated from a raid somewhere south of the Llano River.  The settlers hid in ambush in a gap in the Kothmann Mountains and tied their horses in a nearby thicket. The outcome of the ambush is unknown, but when the men returned to their mounts, they found that the horses had been badly bitten by horseflies, and the spot was consequently named Fly Gap.  

By May 1883 about a dozen families were already in the area.  In October 1884 Samuel L. Fleming and Diedrich Kothmann deeded a parcel of land for a combination church and school, which was built at a site supposedly two miles southwest of where the posse had waited for the Indians.  Miss Belle Starkey was the first teacher there. This first building burned in the spring of 1917, and a new school was built. In October 1884 a post office was established in the Fleming home west of the school, and Sam Fleming was the first postmaster.  This office was discontinued in 1898.  In the late 1970s the Fly Gap Community Club, organized in 1932, had been using the old school as a community center for a number of years.  In 1980 the cemetery and school building were all that remained at the site.