(Adds quotes, details about buyer, background)
By Laura Zuckerman
SALMON, Idaho, April 5 (Reuters) – The town of Buford,
Wyoming – population 1 – was sold for $900,000 to an
unidentified buyer from Vietnam on Thursday after an 11-minute
Internet auction that attracted worldwide interest.
The tiny Western town garnered online viewers and bidders
from 46 countries for the sale of 10-plus acres (4 hectares)
with a convenience store, gas station and modular home located
in southeastern Wyoming between Cheyenne and Laramie.
The buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, flew to Wyoming
from Vietnam for a purchase he likened to “the American dream,”
according to a statement released by Williams & Williams, the
Oklahoma auction house handling the sale.
“Owning a piece of property in the U.S. has been my dream,”
the buyer said in the statement.
Don Sammons, long the town’s sole resident, moved with his
wife, Terry, from Los Angeles to the Buford area in 1980. In
1992, six years after his wife died, Sammons purchased the town.
Sammons decided to auction off the Interstate 80 hamlet,
billed as “the nation’s smallest town” and named after Civil War
Union Army General John Buford, to move to Colorado to be near
his adult son.
“My family is gone. Our purpose for moving here has kind of
been completed, and now I want to find out what other adventures
I have in store,” Sammons, 61, told Reuters in an interview.
Speaking before the sale, which was broadcast online, an
executive with Williams & Williams said the firm had never seen
the level of buzz that attended the Buford auction.
“Auctions always bring a lot of attention, but even we were
amazed at the amount of attention to Buford worldwide,” said Amy
Bates, chief marketing officer for Williams & Williams. “It’s
the Wild West in the U.S. It’s owning your town and getting away
from it all.”
The high-elevation town sprang to life in the 1860s as a
military outpost amid construction of the transcontinental
railroad.
Buford’s population dwindled when the fort moved to Laramie
and the county seat was shifted from Buford to Cheyenne. For
some decades, Buford remained a central point for outlying
ranches.
The settlement is one of two tiny Western towns recently put
up for sale by owners whose spouses have died and whose grown
children live elsewhere.
Pray, Montana, population 8, has been placed on the market
for $1.4 million by owner Barbara Walker, 52. The town had been
in the family of her late husband since 1953.
The 5-acre town sits in the Paradise Valley near Yellowstone
National Park, a scenic, mountainous area home to celebrities
like Jeff Bridges.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Cynthia Johnston; Desking by
Cynthia Osterman)
