On Craigslist: California Ghost Town, $225K

Gold mining town of Seneca up for sale
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 12, 2013 12:13 PM CST
Updated Nov 16, 2013 7:00 PM CST
On Craigslist: California Ghost Town, $225K
This 2003 photo released by the California Travel and Tourism Commission shows California's Feather River.   (AP Photo/Carl Raymond Piesch, California Travel and Tourism Commission)

If you're in the market to relocate, have we got news for you: For just $225,000, you can buy an entire gold mining ghost town in northern California. The 12-acre town of Seneca is listed for sale on Craigslist, Fox News reports, and it comes with its own liquor license and several small buildings, including three cabins and a bar. The ad suggests you buy Seneca and "expand it into a unique getaway! Perhaps the most remote 'restaurant' in Northern California." Oh, and the town's liquor license is one of just a few in Plumas County, should you care to re-open the bar—which has a tree growing up through its porch and is named "The Gin Mill." Interested in more illicit pastimes? The Huffington Post reports there's a defunct opium den inside a gold mine in the area.

Now the bad news: "The town is extremely remote and access is weather-dependent," the ad warns. The road leading to it is scenic, but often unplowed during snows, and full of "extreme drop-offs"—some of them plunging 1,000 feet into a gorge—making it "scary" and "one of the most extreme roads in the region." The buildings are "in states of (dis)repair." But all of that may be worth it if you care about history; the once-booming town held "Woodstock of the West" in the 1970s, was active during the 1849 California Gold Rush, and may have once played host to Ishi, the "last wild Indian" of the Yahi tribe. The sale includes mineral and timber rights, and water from the Feather River, but no utilities—so you'll need a generator. Click to read the ad, or check out another really unusual property for sale. (More Craigslist stories.)

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