Nipton, California
Although Nipton’s mining history makes it fairly common among small towns straddling the California-Nevada border, the fact that it’s spent much of its post-heyday years for sale gives it a unique modern history. According to Business Insider, Jerry Freeman and Roxanne Lang bought the entirety of the town for about $200,000 during the 1980s.
After that, it was sold to a cannabis company called American Green in 2017 for just under $5 million. Although they planned to turn it into a niche tourist destination, those plans apparently fell through, and it was sold to a Scottsdale-based energy company for $7.1 million during the following year. Although an unspecified religious cult, cryptocurrency enthusiasts, and someone trying to build a rail line to Las Vegas all tried to buy Nipton, a risqué Las Vegas circus company called Spiegelworld ended up buying Nipton for $2.5 million in 2021.