Abandoned South Dakota Town on Sale for $250k

http://fortune.com/2015/12/01/abandoned-south-dakota-town/

by prostoalex • 11 years ago

45 90 11 years ago

fortune.com

olalonde• 11 years ago

even one man from Nebraska who wanted to fill the town with 2,000 Russian women and 600 convicted male felons

What?

jessaustin• 11 years ago

Presumably there would be video? There is no explaining the tastes of Nebraskans. b^) I doubt the numbers would favor the felons, however. After a week or so the survivors will have hitchhiked to Sioux Falls.

icebraining2• 11 years ago

Presumably there would be video?

It seems so: "The South Dakota real estate agent said one Nebraska man said he want to buy the Swett ghost town and bring 2,000 Russian women and 600 convicted felons to live in the town. He wanted to build acrylic houses for the new residents to live in and set up cameras to run 24/7 and film the interactions, Syracuse.com reports."

binarymax• 11 years ago

I think this is it: https://goo.gl/maps/HTZMUk4N2Pt

RLN• 11 years ago

I think I would define it as more of a hamlet, if that.

morganvachon• 11 years ago

It's just a short drive to Wounded Knee; that would make it a convenient tourist stop all its own. "On your way to Wounded Knee, stop and stay at the haunted bed and breakfast in Swett!"

protomyth5• 11 years ago

I would caution against using a massacre in advertising particularly while implying a haunting.

zxexz• 11 years ago

I'm confused. This town is in South Dakota, but the house linked to in the article, from Silence of the Lambs, is in Pennsylvania.

imglorp3• 11 years ago

Lazy reporter, stock photo?

protomyth5• 11 years ago

Probably, most of the time ESPN tries to show the North Dakota prairie with buffalos, they actually show stock footage of South Dakota. I would expect this is pretty common.

netcan2• 11 years ago

On one hand, this is a little land with a few building in unattractive location/condition. Not so queer. On the other…

We are at a point in time when the wealthy are extremely wealthy. The billionaire club is substantial but even below that, personal wealth in the tens or hundreds of millions exists. What do people want to do with that wealth? It's more than can really be spent on comfort, entertainment, sex and such. Once upon a time money was power, or could be converted to it. Roman Consuls put personal wealth into political enterprises. They were the system of government and the wealth was intertwined with it. But, the main point was they had social, societal and military ambitions.

Where are the people today who would like to create a 1,000 person community? Where are the wealthy who would like to try a bold experiment in communalism, anarchism, feminism or whatnot?

empthought2• 11 years ago

"Where are the wealthy who would like to try a bold experiment in communalism, anarchism, feminism or whatnot?"

Flippant answer is that the two groups—"the wealthy," and people interested in that sort of thing—have almost no overlap.

mbil• 11 years ago

An example of an exception to that rule of thumb: Robert Owen, a successful industrialist who became one of the founders of utopian socialism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen

http://www.ushistory.org/us/26b.asp

netcan2• 11 years ago

It might also mean that the latter group simply doesn't exist, not in the money-where-your-mouth-is way. It's one thing to be interested in these things in a "someone-should-do-something way".

But I don't really think either of these are true. Bill Gates has some big "political" goals, societal scale ambitions. Elon Musk too, though he seems to like for profit companies as a vehicle. Some charities get substantial endowments and many in the leaser classes dedicate a lot of their time, attention & money to them.

evanpw• 11 years ago

There are a few (at least in the "whatnot" category), but they think bigger than 1000-person towns, and it's often unpopular with the public: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/09/01/under-new-management/.

Kalium11• 11 years ago

I would argue that those experiments fall into three categories:

* Experiments that have been tried (like anarchism and some kinds of communalism) and don't need repeating

* Obviously terrible ideas (anarchism again, communism, some others)

* Beyond the ready scope of purely legal changes (feminism)

And this is even before you start addressing the problems of getting 1000 people going in an environment with meaningful infrastructure. Or having it function economically without being a gaping money pit.

I suspect smart and wealthy people interested in changing society tend to realize that there are more ways to break society than there are to improve society. Therefore, smaller changes that do not individually break society are preferable to changing everything at once and praying you didn't introduce a killer bug somewhere in your batch of a million changes.

As a result, you get more people like George Soros than you do Lenin. For which we may want to consider being thankful.

ZenoArrow17• 11 years ago

Can you give me one example of where communism has been attempted and failed? I don't know of any.

Note that I'm talking about communism as a way to structure societies, which Wikipedia describes as 'a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money, and the state.'.

yolesaber• 11 years ago

Once upon a time money was power, or could be converted to it. Roman Consuls put personal wealth into political enterprises.

When was wealth never not power? Pretty sure that always and still is the case. Rather than serve in the senate (though some millionaires do of course - the senatorial class in the US is extremely wealthy compared to their constituents), the ultrawealthy just setup and donate to PACs as well as use their money to drive propaganda efforts (e.g. Rupert Murdoch). And then of course you have people like Peter Thiel who want to create an offshore libertarian paradise.

Also you would be surprised on how much can truly be spent on sex and entertainment. Multimillionaires go broke all the time due to drugs, partying, and overwhelming decadence.

ZenoArrow17• 11 years ago

"Where are the people today who would like to create a 1,000 person community? Where are the wealthy who would like to try a bold experiment in communalism, anarchism, feminism or whatnot?"

There are similar experiments happening on a smaller scale. I would argue that you wouldn't want to fund these communities through wealthy benefactors, otherwise it creates a sense of deference and obligation, it's far better to have a more egalitarian community IMO.

aaron695• 11 years ago

Communities like these have been tried 100's of times in most countries.

Basically the type of person willing to give up current access to family, friends and job to go there are predominantly weird.

The exception is young people chasing jobs and education ie college towns, San Francisco, SoHo

Or tax havens.

austenallred• 11 years ago

6.16 acres is a really small town. That's practically a large lot in rural towns.

jmspring• 11 years ago

Reminds me of this one in CA in 2013 - http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-c1-ghost-town-20131204-dt...

tibarun• 11 years ago

Looks to me that the seller is just using Fortune to advertise the property.

davefp• 11 years ago

What makes this a 'town' and not just a plot of land? I'm assuming there's zero infrastructure to be managed, so what's left?

anon4• 11 years ago

I suppose it's the fact you won't have legislation between you and the state, i.e. you will have mayor powers over the rest of the population (if you ever get any) and whatever that entails.

chiph• 11 years ago

It may have a charter from the state. No idea what entitlements and obligations that brings with it, other than the highway department putting up "Now entering" and "Now leaving" signs.

LargeWu• 11 years ago

In the Dakotas, the word 'town' is more of a colloquial term. The requirements to be a town are basically that you have one of the following operating: post office, bar, or church. Really, because its so sparsely populated, it may also refer to an area of many square miles around one of the aforementioned establishments (even if they are no longer operational). It's just easier to say "My farm is in Roseglen" than it is to say "My farm is 30 miles northwest of Garrison" (which would be the closest town with an actual government, and businesses). Everybody from the area knows where you're talking about, and it helps locals preserve a bit of identity.

Kiro• 11 years ago

I had a look on Google Maps and there's nothing there except one house. How is this a "town"?

simmons• 11 years ago

It looks like the only way this land could be remotely considered a town is its history -- there was once a post office and 40 people living there. That was apparently enough to get its name on the highway sign. But it's not an incorporated entity, and doesn't appear to have any substantial number of historic buildings left standing, so it really is just a piece of property for sale. You couldn't be your own mayor (as the article implies you could do) any more than I could declare myself to be mayor of my house.

On a side note, I was driving through rural South Dakota around ten years or so ago and stopped to eat at a small town diner. I checked out their bulletin board and was floored that someone was selling a house for $10k. So maybe the area could be a good deal for someone looking to get away from it all. :)

bovermyer• 11 years ago

As someone who has lived in South Dakota previously, yes, you can buy property for pretty cheap - including, even now, houses for 10-20 grand.

However, keep in mind that at that price point, you're usually forgoing things like reasonable Internet, neighbors closer than a mile away, and any kind of nearby amenities whatsoever. Oh, and the house usually needs a ton of work, and the basement is guaranteed to be damp at best, if not moldy.

$250k for a 6 acre plot of land with only one good structure on it seems overpriced for the region. I bought a 5.5 acre farm with a good house, garage, workshop, and sturdy fencing for $70k. Later sold it for $100k.

trentbigelow• 11 years ago

South Dakota might be a good domicile for a fintech startup specializing in credit tech...

jskonhovd• 11 years ago

This reminds me of Wilson, Arkansas but that town sold for quite a bit more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/us/arkansas-towns-new-owne...

bkjelden2• 11 years ago

Sounds like the owner or the bank are just trying to generate some PR buzz and rip off someone not from the area with more money than sense.

It's a few acres of prairie with some buildings that need to be torn down. I'm not up to date on land prices in western SD, but I can't imagine good pasture land is worth more than $2k/acre, even with the surge in beef prices recently.

It's also worth noting that the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations are located in the poorest counties in America. I've visited a couple times and it really is striking that such poverty exists in America. The one stat I can remember from a volunteer trip several years ago was that an 18 yr old boy had a <50% chance of living to 25. When I was in high school we would play football and basketball games there on occasion - our bus always had police escorts in and out of town.

bachmeier2• 11 years ago

According to Google Maps, it's on the Pine Ridge Reservation. An outsider thinking he'd like to own a small town in the country might be in for a surprise. I went to high school on a different reservation in western South Dakota.

About the poverty: When I was in college in the mid-90s, I went on spring break work trips to the Rosebud reservation, and they cited a 90% adult male alcoholism rate.

imglorp3• 11 years ago

The alcoholism and poverty on Pine Ridge and Rosebud are no joke. I think there's a genetic component and a cultural component that together almost guarantee it; both drivers are exacerbated by the insular nature of their community.

I volunteered with the Habitat chapter near there. They could not build on the res because any houses under construction would be stripped of their copper wire and plumbing before they could be completed. What they really need is a big employer to set up shop there: rising tide floating all boats, etc.

bkjelden2• 11 years ago

That's very believable. When I was there, every single morning I would see flatbed trucks hauling mangled cars down the road - presumably the cars were wrecked in a DUI accident the night before.

dionidium4• 11 years ago

The one stat I can remember from a volunteer trip several years ago was that an 18 yr old boy had a <50% chance of living to 25.

This doesn't pass any sniff test I can think of.

jws• 11 years ago

I could believe "still living there when he was 25". Might be a corrupted context statistic.

The life expectancy for males in the county (whole reservation) is 71-72 years. If 50% are dying in their "stupid nearly adult years" they are going to have to have bunch living past 100 to bring the average up.

tempodox• 11 years ago

If I had the spare change I would take it.

sireat• 11 years ago

You could buy a whole military Soviet town for $330,000 sans the destroyed mega-radar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skrunda

The problem is upkeep and finding something useful to do with the place.

I know in Germany some of the NATO military towns have been repurposed.

martin1b• 11 years ago

6 acres? A town? Well that's just ridiculous. Just to convey the size, that picture covers well over 6 acres. The white buildings would be the far edge. Not to mention you would need to haul the trashy buildings off to do anything with it. Must be a slow news day..

Abandoned South Dakota Town on Sale for $250k

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