Buying, owning, and ruling the rural West

The Netflix binge-worthy and Emmy award winning Schitt’s Creek brought to millions of households during the pandemic the tribulations of a wealthy family who, after purchasing a rural town as a joke, are forced to reside there following their fall from grace.

But purchasing small towns is not just the stuff of fiction. The lure of the rural has exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, with “Zoom Towns” sprouting up across the country and rural real estate interest sky rocketing. Blog posts discussing the attraction to the rural during COVID-19 can be found here and here.

One such example of the rural boom is Gunnison, Colorado where wealthy, second home owners flocked in order to escape the pandemic, ultimately creating a local political battle for authority. This recent surge may simply be indicative of rural gentrification, but it may also expose a specific Western appeal that has existed for much longer.

When the West was made more accessible by the Homestead Act of 1862, primarily white settlers set out to claim their piece of “the wild,” in complete denial of the already existing ownership of land by tribal nations.

For many homesteaders, this was a chance to break from society, to achieve an independence no longer accessible in the East, to strike it rich, and to hide. Lisa Pruitt discusses the idea of going West to remain hidden in the vast rural-scape in her piece The Rural Lawscape: Space Tames Law Tames Space, in The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography.

Today, rural towns have an allure for city locked Americans who are looking for some elbow room. But maybe there are some other draws to the West as a destination for the ultimate escape and true ability to control one's environment, which is not new by any means.

Take the town of Scenic, South Dakota, with a population of approximately ten, that staggers a main street running through vast prairies. Most of the buildings in the town, some surviving since the 1800s, serve as reminders of frontier life, including racist signs and metal barracks. So when Scenic was purchased in 2011, much buzz surrounded the identity of the purchaser.

The buyer finally became publicly known four years after Scenic’s purchase: Iglesia ni Cristo, or, in English, the Church of Christ. The Philippines based church began setting up shop in the South Dakota ghost town, with the gold rush era buildings being covered in colorful religious banners, and flags placed to welcome all those who happened to make their way through the rarely visited place.

A photo of Scenic, South Dakota's main street, taken in January 2021.

Iglesia ni Cristo is a politically powerful church in the Philippines, and has made news for more than religious ministry, including corruption, kidnappings, and murders. Residents near Scenic expressed concern of a cult moving in, perhaps exposing a general distrust of outsiders that may be found in rural communities. However, church members clarified their purpose in purchasing Scenic was to spread their ministry, and Scenic remains a mostly sleepy ghost town today, with only the addition of weekly church services.

The town of Leith, North Dakota, with a population of approximately sixteen, paints an entirely different story of Western ownership. In 2013, prominent white supremacist Craig Cobb moved to Leith with motives to claim the town as a white supremacist haven. Blog posts on Cobb’s initial presence in Leith can be found here and here.

Cobb’s quest to fill Leith with fellow supporters and gain control of city council is documented in the film Welcome to Leith. Although the mayor of Leith and local residents successfully kicked Cobb out, the Neo-Nazi fight left a lasting impression and led Mayor Schock to spearhead a referendum in 2018 to dissolve the town.

Even more recently, a 140 acre compound “hidden” outside of Pringle, South Dakota and run by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an oppressive cult classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as white supremacist and totalitarian, was finally ordered for sale by a judge after years of non-interference by the local and state governments. The compound remained an untouchable hideout in the rural expanse for years, with claims of human trafficking ignored throughout.

These rural towns and places, although different in substance and objective, illustrate a continuing idea that the rural West is available for the taking, whether through purchase or hostile action. The current move to the rural west by the wealthy may be for entirely different reasons, but perhaps with a similar desire to escape, hide, or embrace an entirely new life.