Years ago, when Kidwell put the town up for sale at $17 million, two developers got into a bidding war before the real estate market collapsed and her well-laid plans turned back to dust. They built a mobile home park and gas station, then opened the Cal-Nev-Ari Casino, building backyard hangars for pilots to stash their planes. People laughed at their foolishness -- friends had a good cackle over Slim Kidwell and his "blue-sky dreams" -- which just made the couple work harder. Kidwell does everything in Cal-Nev-Ari, from ordering the beef patties for the café, to opening up the post office, and hiring the bartenders for the 24-hour saloon. If you don't recall your password, click the 'Forgot Your Password?' Now, at a mere $8 million, Kidwell is seeing sizable interest: "My broker says the whole thing has gone viral." "I'm going to find out what you do after you spend 51 years of your life working in one place," she said, "when you suddenly don't have to wake up at 5 am each day to get the work done." One of the details in the town's sale is that the cemetery -- and Nancy Kidwell -- must remain.
– A couple hundred miles from San Francisco, where somedays it seems like $8 million will just about get you a dilapidated one-bedroom condo, that amount of money can buy you an entire town. CBS News reports Nancy Kidwell is selling the Nevada town she founded in 1951 with her first husband, Slim. Cal-Nev-Ari lies 80 miles south of Las Vegas and boasts 375 or so residents, a hotel, a general store, a casino, and even a few stop signs. "It may look bland and boring, but it's pretty cool," says one 12-year-old resident. Kidwell got the land from the federal government when it was nothing but an old WWII airstrip. She and Slim built it up from nothing, and when Slim died in 1983 of Alzheimer's—he was 34 years her senior, according to AFP—she married his son Ace and kept going. Five years after Ace's death, also of Alzheimer's, Kidwell is the town's mayor and police chief; she makes sure there's water in the tank every day, orders provisions for the cafe, and does just about everything else. But at 78 years old, it's time to retire. "I'm selling it because I'm not getting any younger," Kidwell tells CBS. "There's no one to take my place, so I have to start providing for the future of the community." Cal-Nev-Ari is listed on BizBuySell.com, and there are already a handful of interested buyers. One wants to build an automobile test track; another wants to open a marijuana resort. But there's one catch to the sale: The cemetery where Ace and Slim are buried and where Nancy already has a plot must remain. "When your roots are somewhere, that's where you want to be," she tells CBS. (In Maine, this property promised an escape from doomsday.)