Have a spare $250,000 laying around?
The entire town of Swett, South Dakota is up for grabs.
This will include the tavern, a 3 bedroom house and an unused tire shop.
Thrown in for free is a brand spanking new town sign, courtesy of the state of South Dakota - as the previous one had too many bullet holes in it.
That doesn’t sound like a good deal to me. The whole town is supposedly just 6 acres which is just chump change in upper Midwestern acreage terms. The buildings may be worth something but not $250,000. That area has remained isolated over the decades for a reason.
There are ghost towns that come up for sale fairly frequently and many of them are much bigger physically. I am not sure why a person would want one but it could be a cool way for a wealthy hermit to live out their own Twilight Zone episodes.
Gee, if I bought it, could I rename it FairyChatVille? And would the state give me a new sign with the new name? If so, I might be interested…
Now, if you were going to buy the town, you would become mayor, right? Which means you’d be responsible for economic development, right? So, if you can’t get any oil mines or diamond wells, you’d need the next best thing: a tourist attraction!
So I am proposing…
wait for it…
A theme park! FairyChatVille would be a cutting-edge meld of social media and traditional story-telling. The various buildings would be dressed to match different stories and ages, and guests could communicate from one to another, ensuring all sorts of wacky hijinks!
Be our guest,
Be our guest,
Put your wallet to the test,
When it comes to making money
FairyChatVille is the best…
How many dopers could we fit on 6 acres?
I bet we could come up with some fun names actually. SD, SD.
Straight Dope, South Dakota.
I will buy it if they will put the old bullet ridden sign back:D
Depends on how high you’re willing to stack them.
Thank you for my first and possibly only belly laugh of the day:D
Just put a sign over the tire store saying “Bates Motel”. Then wait. Soon enough some meth-cookers will show up to give you the freak show you want.
Okay, but I’ve always preferred to be on top.
If you purchased this town, you could turn it in to your own personal Valkanvania.
Doper commune! 
You misspelled ‘compound’. 
depends on if it’s incorporated and has a charter.
I wonder if that tire shop has any of the equipment left. That would be Sweet!
Do I get my very own member of the South Dakotan legislature?
Mods change this to marketplace please.
South Dakota is like that. My relatives who live there can point to an empty field and say how a town complete with businesses and a post office once sat there.
Incidentally South Dakotas last one room schoolhouse closed in 2010.
You are very, very wrong.
There was another South Dakota town that sold in 2011.
Frankly, I’d hesitate to buy any property in that area of the state.
Like most states, South Dakota legislators represent districts. Swett is part of district 27 which covers a very large area of south central South Dakota. It currently has two representatives and one senator.