Somewhere between the city of Denver and the town of Last Chance lies a “ghost town” called Cabin Creek—it’s out there on U.S. Route 36 and it’s available for you to buy.
For an asking price of $350,000, you would get “just under 5 acres of property with the old Gas Station, 8 room Motel, Road Side Restaurant Café, 8 space RV Park, 2 Houses, and private shooting range.” The gas station measures 3,300 square feet and was actually once used as a movie theater. The roadside café has “small seating area, bathroom, cook kitchen, manager’s office, underground cold storage room and 3 bedrooms in the basement.”
According to the Denver FOX affiliate, the place was once “quite the gathering spot”—as a neighbor from nearby Byers attested, the café used to serve “the best chicken fried steak in the state.”
The seller’s name is James Johnson, and he has been pleasantly surprised by all the attention the property is getting. Johnson’s wife would like to retire and do some traveling but “the project” keeps them there. To their credit, the ad does a thorough job of walking buyers through the amount of work—some of it “nasty work” that “nobody likes to do”—that would be required to make a go of it. The Johnsons are looking to relocate to somewhere even more remote than Cabin Creek—they’re thinking about “Idaho or Montana.”
The neighbor mentioned above also noted that the property has a gruesome past, commenting that “there was a murder there. There was some people that they took in, felt sorry for or something, and they found out the couple had money.”
The murder put the little roadside stopping place under a cloud. Johnson noted that after that, “everything just, literally, there was nobody here, so these buildings sat totally vacant. Nothing going on out here for a number of years.” So clearly, if you want to say the place is “haunted,” go for it (the Johnsons don’t use the word).
The property is perfect if you want to live out your fantasy of being that odd rural movie character who spooks the city slickers after they get lost in the middle of nowhere and need to gas up and get some directions.
“Most neighbors are hundreds of acres away,” says the ad, in a sentence that forges new ground in putting an uneasy weight on the word “most.”
Using the term “ghost town” for the unusual property has its up side and its down side—it’s great for attracting attention among potential buyers but when the time comes to secure a loan, it ceases to be such a positive thing, Johnson says. “The hardest part out here is you’re not going to get a regular conventional loan on this property. You say ghost town and they say what?”
via The Daily Dot
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
There’s a giant pink vagina couch for sale on Craigslist
Willie Nelson’s majestic, skunky-smelling tour bus is for sale on Craigslist