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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?
I had a look on Google Maps and there's nothing there except one house. How is this a "town"?
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. :)
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?
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…
"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.
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.
6.16 acres is a really small town. That's practically a large lot in rural towns.
I had a look on Google Maps and there's nothing there except one house. How is this a "town"?
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 (a…
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.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/20/us/arkansas-towns-new-owne...
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.