18 Months After Failed Online Auction, Tiny Burg Is Sold

A Laguna Hills man has paid $700,000 to purchase the Humboldt County town of Bridgeville, a tiny burg that sparked a bidding frenzy on EBay when it was offered for sale about a year and a half ago.

The 82-acre property was purchased by Bruce Krall, a financial advisor who said he first saw the town a few months ago on a posting on another Web site.

“I put it in a file and forgot about it, then dug it out a couple of months ago,” he said. “I was curious. I thought, ‘I wonder if that thing ever sold?’ ”

It hadn’t. “I flew up there on a Saturday morning and we went under contract Saturday night to buy it,” said Krall, who closed escrow Tuesday.

He said the physical beauty and accessibility of the area exceeded his expectations. With a population of 20, Bridgeville, tucked off the winding, two-lane California 36, about an hour southeast of Eureka and 260 miles north of San Francisco, once was a thriving community built around logging.

But the grandeur of the natural surroundings -- mountains of majestic redwoods, the scenic Van Duzen River -- contrasts with the town’s physical deterioration. Several buildings already have been torn down, the well and water system need replacing, and the old restaurant, which closed years ago, will have to be demolished, said Denise Stuart, a Eureka Realtor who handled the sale.

Krall’s purchase includes nine parcels, with four cabins, eight rental houses, the shuttered general store and restaurant, a historic cemetery, working post office, a few Quonset huts, a machine shop, tractor and rusting backhoe.

He said his plans for the town were tentative.

“Obviously, the town is in a terrible condition,” Krall said. “It needs a lot of cleaning up.” He said he planned to go in this summer and remove a number of old dilapidated mobile homes and other debris.

“It’s very fluid right now. I have some ideas, but certainly I want to fix it up and make it nice,” he said. “I’d like to attract some people out there who’d like to be out in the country, get a small population of people who want to do some creative stuff out there.”

Krall said his primary interest was to build a modest resort or retreat center; then, if that goes well, possibly a store, restaurant and art galleries.

Online bidding in December 2002 drove the price of the property up to $1.78 million, well above the minimum. But the deal never closed and the town was put back on the market late last year.

“This time, I put all the disclosures up front, so that people didn’t think they were coming up to buy a piece of paradise when it’s a fixer-upper,” said Stuart, the Realtor who represented the previous owner, antiques dealer Elizabeth Lapple.

Residents of the town welcomed news of the sale.

“There’s so much potential here, and I think he sees that,” said Lynda Cesaretti, director of Bridgeville Community Center. “We’re very excited.”