Metal-Dighton 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, preserves the tracking number 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.

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.

Dighton is a town of about 1,000 people in Lane County, in the west-central part of the state.  It is the county seat and was named for Dick Dighton, a surveyor.  Dighton was in a neighboring county and our high schools competed in the same league. We were the Beavers and wore blue and white.  They were the Hornets, their colors were black and yellow and I thought they always had the better looking uniforms. However, our town and school was twice the size so we usually prevailed. 

To add a somber historical note, in 1928, the Fleagle Gang robbed the First National Bank of Lamar, Colorado of $220,000.  A gunfight erupted during the robbery.  Two employees were killed but one of the gang had been shot in the jaw.  The gang fled back home to southwest Kansas.  Needing medical care, they kidnapped a Dighton doctor, W.W. Weinenger.  He and a hostage taken during the robbery were later found murdered. All the gang members were either shot down in gun battles or hanged by authorities.  The Fleagles famously buried money in in California, Kansas and Missouri.  Caches were still being found as late as the 1960s.