Love Bug-Jericho Acrylic Pink Glitter

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 and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Photos in the travel bug logs are appreciated.  I will be re-post them here, where they can be seen by other cachers.

This is one of a series of heart-shaped items obtained from different places and converted into travel bugs. They are named either for the places of their origin or for Texas Panhandle-South Plains towns with interesting names or histories.

Jericho, now a ghost town, is just off Interstate Highway 40 in northern Donley County.  The town was founded in the late 1880s as a mail coach stop to change horses and feed any passengers aboard.  Composed of a dugout with drinking water hauled in wooden barrels from a nearby spring, settlers began to gather as the Indians were removed to reservations after the Red River Wars ended in the late 1870s.  It became a station on the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway in 1902.   The same year the town was granted a post office and was named for the biblical city in Palestine.  

Jericho became famous in legend and folklore after Congress authorized a new coast-to-coast highway in 1926, calling it Route 66.  The fame arose from the Jericho Gap, the stretch of highway between Alanreed and Groom.  Rain turned the dirt roads into black-gumbo-mud and were almost impassible to the vehicles of the period.  Nearby farmers made a good living with their teams of work horses pulling the travellers from the mud holes.  Legend has it that the enterprising farmers hauled water at night to dump in the mud holes to prolong their source of income.

At its height in the 1930s, Jericho had three stores, a grain elevator, a tourist court, and a garage and filling station.  Jericho's population was estimated to be 100 in 1933.  However,  Route 66 was moved one-half mile north, by-passing the town.  The population dropped to 50 by 1939.   Its post office was discontinued in 1955, and by the 1980s little remained at the townsite.