Pulse24.com - January  31, 2005

It’s quiet. Too quiet. But now it’s up to a Virginia property developer to bring in the noise. The silent item is actually an abandoned British Columbia mining town that comes with a library, pub and hospital. The developer, who wasn’t identified, snatched all that up for under $7 million. Now he owns all of Kitsault, which is about 500 miles northwest of Vancouver, according to the town’s marketing agent. It went up for sale in September after being vacant and looked after by a caretaker, for more than 20 years. Everybody left Kitsault when the nearby molybdenum mine was closed. Now the owner has to figure out what to do with the place that a few thousand people used to call home and now boasts 90 houses, 210 apartments, a dock, shopping centre, gym and curling rink. “There is something about owning a town...There's a mystique about it. He'll worry about what do with it later,” said Rudy Nielson of Niho Land & Cattle. Apparently the investor is thinking about bringing the spot back to life as a vacation resort. Maybe this story is giving hope to ghost towns everywhere.