Instead of buying a home, how about a whole town? These 15 U.S. towns happen to be listed or just sold:
Where: Along the Moodus River
Size: 62 acres
Population: Abandoned
What you get: general store, homes, restaurant, one-room schoolhouse
Asking Price: starting bid of $800,000 at auction
This quaint Connecticut hamlet has been vacant for more than 20 years, and actually has seen the population come and go since the 1830s, when Johnsonville was a thriving mill town. In the 1960s, a millionaire bought Johnsonville and tried to turn it into a theme park, but it never came to fruition and the town was abandoned again after his death in 1998. It was next bought by a hotelier, who saw the potential in the town’s unique Victorian and Colonial-era buildings and homes but did nothing with it, and subsequently listed it for sale.
Buford, Wyoming
Where: 28 miles west of Cheyenne and just north of the Colorado border
Size: 10 acres
Population: 1 resident
What you get: Buford Trading Post with general store and gas station, U.S. post office boxes, cellular tower, and five buildings
Asking Price: auctioned for $900,000
Buford is known as the nation’s smallest town. It’s not likely it loses that designation anytime soon since it has only one resident, a man named Don Simmons. Built in 1866 and Wyoming’s second-oldest home, Buford was a railroad town had once had a population over 2,000 people, but became a ghost town once the railroad closed down. Sammons’ family bought the land in the 1980s after moving there from Los Angeles.
Where: 123 miles from Rapid City near the Nebraska border
Size: 6 acres
Population: no known residents after 3 mobile homes were removed
What you get: A home, garage/shop, and a bar called the Swett Tavern.
Asking Price: $250,000.
This town and its only home are supposedly haunted, which could be why it didn’t sell with its original $399,000 asking price in 2014.
Where: Pennington County, South Dakota
Size: 46 acres
Population: 10 residents
What you get: Post office and land
Asking Price: sold for $799,000 in July 2011.
Rodeo legend Twila Merrill bought the land in and around Scenic decades ago but recently sold because of her declining health. The Iglesia ni Cristo church of the Philippines bought the town last August, but hasn’t broken ground on any constructions or announced their plans.
Where: right near the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn
Size: 1 square mile
Population: 2
What you get: Trading post, museum, office complex, bed and breakfast, post office, gas station, restaurant and a 4,000-square-foot residence.
Asking Price: $6.5 million
Current owner of Garryowen Chris Kortlander listed the town for sale in 2008, along with the Elizabeth Bacon Custer Manuscript Archive. The town is unique as a historical site because it sits in Sitting Bull's camp where the Battle of the Little Bighorn took place in 1876. However, Kortlander has been in a big legal skirmish with the U.S. government, which accused him of dealing fraudulent artifacts, though the investigation was dropped in 2009.
Where: 119 miles southwest of Atlanta
Size: 50 acres
Population: 700 residents
What you get: old opera house that seats 500 people, a barber shop, and a hotel with 18 bedrooms and baths built in the 1880s, operating grist mill, syrup mill, cotton warehouse, railroad station and about a dozen houses
Asking Price: $2.45 million
Owner David Bumgardner advertises this town for sale as the perfect movie set for a studio that needs a 19th-century town for filming.
Where: near the Montana border
Size: 44 square miles
Population: 162 residents
What you get: 5,000-square-foot commercial building, a former restaurant, numerous rental mobile homes, a pond, an apple tree, plum trees, two gas pumps and more than 500 feet of highway frontage.
Asking Price:
Price: up for auction on eBay with a starting bid of $330,000, or a Buy It Now price of $525,000
The entire town is for sale at that price…except its one bar, which is being sold separately.
Where: 70 miles east of Asheville, NC
Size: 72 acres
Population: Abandoned
What you get: About 20 buildings, many of them from an old mill that burned down in 1977
Asking Price: $1.4 million
Henry River was used as District 12 in the popular movie, The Hunger Games!
Where: Along the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley
Size: 5 acres
Population: 681 residents
What you get: A general store, a post office, a four-unit trailer park, and five commercially zoned acres
Asking Price: $1.4 million
Pray, got its name 105 years ago after Montana Congressman Charles N. Pray.
Eustis, Florida
Where: Lake County, Florida
Size: 11 acres
Population: 19,000 residents
What you get: 11-aces of lakefront downtown property including all buildings
Asking Price: Listed for $7.8 million on eBay in October 2008
When the previous owner of Eustis, a hospital, moved to a neighboring town in 2003, the community listed the 11-acre town, but with no success.
Where: Between Seattle and Spokane
Size: 60 acres
Population: No population reported
What you get: Seven houses, an old schoolhouse, seven houses, a general store and a post office
Asking Price: $575,000
Monse offers great views of the Okanogan River but never sold, so the town’s owners subdivided the land into smaller parcels for sale.
Where: Along the Price river in rural Emery County, Utah
Size: 706 acres
Population: 0 people and 2 llamas
What you get: A service station, a post office, a vandalized roadside geyser (once a tourist attraction in the pre-vandal days when it shot higher), and two free-range llamas.
Asking Price: $3.9 million
Butch Cassidy slept in this town, and used the canyon country area as a hideout. But that still doesn’t justify an almost-$4 million asking price – unless you really like llamas.
Where: Elmore County, Idaho 62 miles northeast of the town of Mountain Home
Size: 8.9 acres
Population: 2,500 residents
What you get: The buyer got a hotel, mine, wading pool, town jail, and timber and mineral rights.
Asking Price: Sold for $250,000 in June 2007
Michael Ciluaga, a construction company owner from Boise, bought the ghost town of Rocky Bar in 2007.
Where: Halfway between Reno and Salt Lake City
Size: 160 acres
Population: Abandoned
What you get: Not much in terms of infrastructure and functional buildings
Asking Price: Auctioned for $150,000 in 2005
Paliside – now 135 years old - was once a railroad connection hub for nearby mines, but everyone cleared out once the mines closed. Its claim to fame is that President Herbery Hoover was almost assassinated in the town when two men tried to set 22 sticks of dynamite along the tracks when his train was approaching.
Where: 53 miles northeast of Atlanta
Size: 2,000 acres
Population: 8,000 residents
What you get: A full town with police department, U.S. post office, and fire station as well as many homes
Asking Price: Sold in 1994 for $1 million
Actress Kim Basinger originally bought this town in 1989 for $20 million, but had to let it go for only $1 million a mere five years later when she went bankrupt.
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And remember that if you would like to buy a whole town, we'd love to represent you!
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