Magical Nipton: Dream to turn tiny town into cannabis vacation destination goes up in smoke
The late summer sun still managed to emit enough heat to make me sweat one late September day as I was driving down a two-lane desert highway in parts of California so hidden that nobody mentions them in songs of any genre.
The map app on my cell phone had unfortunately sent me travelling the wrong way home from Las Vegas, passed a tiny town I would have missed it if not for the sign posted at the entrance.
I was just 12 miles from the state line and a few yards over a bumpy railroad crossing when I noticed the sign that read: “Nipton For Sale.”
The locked doors and dusty underbrush gave away few clues that this cluster of shuttered buildings was one company’s abandoned dream of the country’s first cannabis-themed resort.
The town sits on the crossroads of the old San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad and a rarely travelled highway at the eastern gateway of the 1.6-million-acre Mojave National Preserve. Nipton is an old mining town founded in 1905 as Nippeno Camp after the discovery of gold nearby. Some residents are still mining for the treasure in nearby creeks.
I parked my Jeep and walked around the abandoned village, reading signs posted on the Nipton Trading Post that indicated the town had closed due to COVID-19 in April. The shrubbery was overgrown. Cactus plants, dust and weeds were beginning to cover any ground coverings. A few pavers were left near a picnic bench, stamped with marijuana leaves. An overhang was torn and blowing in the wind, leaving it useless as a covering from the ruthless rays of the desert sun.
In the far reaches of the property was Hotel California, a majestic attempt at making a small hotel sound inviting. The adobe building was fenced off and abandoned.
“Fallout New Vegas” video game enthusiasts should recognize the name of the town. The topography of the tiny desert outpost looks similar to the video game, but the buildings are much smaller and less apocalyptic. It does exist and the lottery did actually have real winners, just like the game. A sign in the Nipton Trading Post still reminds anyone passing through that the store sold a winning ticket worth $138,702 in prizes in the California Lottery in 2018.
(Photo courtesy of Fallout New Vegas) Fallout New Vegas fans should recognize Nipton from the video game. The topography is similar but much less apocalyptic.
Nevada State Route 164, also known as Nipton Road, cuts through the middle of the unincorporated grouping of buildings, leaving the store, hotel and a home on one side, and RV park, teepees and other assorted domiciles on the other.
Tony Castrignano, a broker with Sky Mesa Capital, a mortgage and capital company based in Las Vegas is listing the property for the Freeman-Lang Revocable Living Trust.
“It’s for sale,” Castrignano said Sept. 29. “It’s $3 million for 80 acres, and that includes everything within the commercial development of Nipton — the 80 acres. It includes the store, the hotel, the restaurant.”
UPDATE; In a report dated April 19, 2021, KTNV Channel 13 in Las Vegas reported the price is now $2.75 million.
This is the third time in four years the town has been on the market.
The town also includes over 35 recreational vehicle spots with hookups, campsites, restroom facilities with steam rooms and saunas, and enough space to add more development, Castrignano said.
The destination also includes “glamping” teepees, where guests can enjoy camping out in a glamorous fashion. The hotel was converted from Hotel Nipton to Hotel California, an ode to the Eagles song that references getting high under the stars. Though in its current state, the hotel looks more like a place where guests would be “running for the door” from the spirits of the night.
More information is available, but he can’t just give it away to anyone, he said.
“We do have information that we do provide to you know people that show a genuine interest. It’s not like we open up financials to everyone,” Castrignano said.
Pipe dream smoulders
The postage-stamp-sized village made national news just three years ago when an Arizona-based marijuana company purchased the town and declared its intentions to turn it into the country’s first cannabis-themed resort.
American Green Inc., the nation’s largest publicly traded marijuana company, signed a $5 million contract to purchase the 80-acre property in 2017 from Roxanne Lang.
The company touted plans for hundreds of hotel rooms, mineral baths, a dinner theater, a marijuana farm, a big hot-air balloon to hoist visitors into the air and a “Green Express” passenger train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas with a dinner stop in Nipton.
Residents of the micro berg numbered between six-16 at the time, according to its self-appointed mayor Jim Esliger. After American Green’s purchase, the population blossomed to 25.
Plans for the pot paradise called for renovating the five-room Hotel California, an outdoor smoking lounge and hookah bar, restaurants and microbrewery, a “medical academy” and wellness spa. The company did not say what type of medical school they planned to open.
The company began to hit roadblocks right away with San Bernardino’s legal marijuana laws. California voters approved the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, Proposition 64, legalizing recreational use of cannabis, in 2016, allowing adults to grow, use and transport cannabis for personal use. But commercial activities can still be regulated or prohibited by local governments.
American Green was prohibited from cultivating commercial cannabis in the unincorporated area of the county where Nipton was located. The company told news outlets that it planned to incorporate the town and implement its own laws, but the process was costly, complex and would take years, according to county officials at the time.
One year after purchasing Nipton, the cannabis technology company sold the town to Delta International Oil & Gas for $7.7 million, a Scottsdale, Ariz. company that focuses on exploratory drilling. American Green planned to manage Nipton for 10 years, transferring its holdings in Nipton to the oil and gas corporation.
The deal called for American Green to manage projects for five years with another five-year option following that. In the deal, Delta would seek to acquire more properties after the Nipton acquisition, with American Green also managing those properties. Delta would assume about $3.73 million in American Green debt, and issue $4 million in Delta stock, as part of the agreement.
“Buying and building towns is very cash-intensive. Up until now, the cost of attracting capital has been very expensive for our company,” American Green said in a statement in March 2018.
American Green sells marijuana vending machines and CBD-infused products that tout pain relief. They hoped to create Nipton-made CBD products made from the town’s aquifer.
At the time, the deal included the provision that the companies continue with the project to transform Nipton into a marijuana mecca.
“I believe that this will be a win-win situation for American Green and our shareholders,” said American Green’s Chairman David Gwyther at the time of the sale in 2018.
By August 2018, the tables had turned and American Green had purchased 80% of the oil and gas company. American Green announced that Delta International OIl & Gas had changed its name to CannAwake Corporation, with the new stock symbol (CANX).
“The name change is a public reflection of our organization’s shift away from Oil and Gas exploration/development toward Real Estate development with a strong focus on green and sustainable projects. One of the positive aspects of rebuilding Nipton has been the continuing positing input we have received from the County officials of San Bernardino,” said Scott Stoegbauer, CannAwake’s president in a press release Aug. 10, 2018.
Also in 2018, American Green started new environmentally friendly projects. Its project manager, Stephen Shearin, brought in trash from the 2015 Super Bowl to make durable, energy-absorbing concrete as part of its effort to create the first zero-waste city in the country.
The Super Bowl garbage was combined with Nipton’s own refuse to develop the vision of the late Hollywood geologist Gerald Freeman, Lang’s husband. Freeman and his family purchased the town in 1984 for $200,000 with plans to create an environmentally self-sufficient area of California.
Lang and her husband moved to Nipton and revitalized the town, spending $1 million to restore it, planting shade trees, creating organic farming projects and installing solar panels.
Freeman died in 2016 and Lang sold Nipton and 120-acres of the surrounding area in 2017 to American Green. Eighty acres include the town’s market, The Whistlestop Cafe restaurant, hotel, trailer park and teepees. Solar panels are located on the remaining 40 acres.
American Green apparently defaulted on its contract and the property has reverted back to the family trust.
Dream crushed
The collapse of the development has devastated some townies.
NiptonWizard at Investorshub.com reported in June that Nipton was “locked up and fenced.”
“Last of American Green staff seen packing up and looting the town. Nipton regulators have moved into town to maintain the peace. American Greens (sic) damage to the community was devastating. We are committed to the restoration and preservation of Nipton and look forward to creating and supporting new economic opportunities in the East gateway to the Mohave,” NiptonWizard wrote.
According to others on the Investorshub.com site, Lang and former American Green project manager Stephen Shearin had moved in to manage Nipton’s recovery and maintain the peace.
Liquid assets
Deep beneath the dirt streets and tin campers of Nipton lies an ancient aquifer with groundwater deposited in the area at least 12,000 years ago. The water’s ability to be recharged by precipitation is likely very limited, John Izbicki, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who studies Mojave Desert groundwater, told Aspen Journalism.
The $3 million sale of Nipton again includes access to the aquifer, a valuable resource in the California desert.
Nipton is one of many users in the Ivanho Valley groundwater basin, an area of 311 square miles that straddles the state line and is divided by a large natural runoff channel called Wheaton Wash. A 2004 report by the California Department of Water Resources estimated the basin holds 3 million acre-feet of water.
A solar project and golf course within the basin recently began to drain the aquifer, worrying some that the incoming cannabis operation might further impact the water level.
American Green had planned to use the water to bottle cannabis-infused water that would “make you feel like you’re 18 again,” Shearin told the Los Angeles Times,” and irrigate marijuana crops.
“We have access to a very large aquifer, and we’ll be using it accordingly,” David Gwyther, chairman and president of American Green told Aspen Journalism in 2017.
The water might be the most valuable asset of Nipton, according to Castrignano.
“The water is probably the most important,” Castrignano said. “Not just that it has water, but the quality of the water is outstanding. It can be used for commercial uses.”
The wave of the future?
Buying old mining towns and fixing them up could prove to be a trend in the future.
In 2018, a group of investors purchased Cerro Gordo, a 19th century Old West silver mining ghost town in California located about 200 miles north of Los Angeles, near Lone Pine. The town is situated near Death Valley National Park on the edge of the Inyo Mountains in Owens Valley.
Two young entrepreneurs, Jon Bier, the owner of a boutique public relations agency in New York and Los Angeles, and Brent Underwood, the owner of a hostel in Austin, Texas, purchased the 300-acre property with 22 buildings in hopes of renovating them for use as a corporate retreat facility and place to shoot films.
The investors paid $1.4 million for the property.
As for Nipton, hopefully they will soon be drinking pink Champagne on ice and living it up once again at the Hotel California and the teepees and shops. For now, they have definitely checked out and left.
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