Cannabis Company Buys Tiny California Town

Marijuana start-up American Green Inc. has signed an agreement to purchase the six-person, 80-acre town of Nipton in San Bernardino County in hopes of creating a cannabis tourist destination there. In a statement, the company’s president compared the potential for legal cannabis to revitalize communities to the Gold Rush.

Though "conveniently located in the middle of nowhere," Nipton already has a (relatively) sizable tourism industry because of its proximity to the Mojave National Preserve. Now, the cannabis company plans to ramp up that industry, using marijuana as the main draw.

Once the sale goes through, American Green plans to start with Nipton’s water: The town sits on a Pleistocene-era underground lake, and the company wants to bottle cannabis-infused H2O for distribution in California, where recreational marijuana became legal last year. American Green said it is also in talks with edible and extraction companies about setting up production facilities in Nipton. Eventually, the company plans to offer everything from cannabis mineral baths to artists-in-residence programs and cannabis culinary events.

Nipton currently gets about half of its power from a solar array built by its previous owner, a geologist, who passed away in 2016.