Town Is Going, Going ...

Selling a town isn’t easy.

When the Lapple family tried to hawk the little Humboldt County hamlet of Bridgeville through conventional real estate channels, they barely got a bite. So the Lapples turned to the Internet, and now, to the disbelief of neighboring residents, the price for the 80-plus-acre community is soaring.

On Christmas Day, last-minute holiday shoppers from as far away as Germany sent the bid price above $1.6 million from just $475,000 a day earlier. With the electronic auction due to run through Friday, Edward and Elizabeth Lapple, the brother and sister whose family has owned the unincorporated town since 1972, are giddily hoping for a high bid of as much as $3 million.

“Bridgeville is a beautiful little town out in the middle of the redwoods,” said Elizabeth Lapple, who lives down the road in in Fortuna.

But for some neighbors, the outside interest in the rustic one-time timber enclave 260 miles north of San Francisco is nothing short of a crack-up.

“Obviously they haven’t traipsed to Bridgeville lately,” said Lauren Shuman, who with her husband operates a cattle ranch on the outskirts of town. “We’re all clutching our sides and rolling around on the ground. It’s hysterical.”

For years, Lapple and her brother, Edward Lapple of Fillmore in Ventura County, have made a living selling on EBay.

Elizabeth offers antiques and glassware. Edward says he earns about $15,000 a month selling electronic broadcast equipment.

Bridgeville itself was listed on the online site Nov. 27, but the asking price didn’t take off until this week.

High bidders, whose identities are made public only to the sellers, have included a New York doctor, a Las Vegas accountant, a Pennsylvania lawyer and a man from Germany, Elizabeth said.

The Web site pitches the town as a buyer’s fantasy.

“It can be a private retreat, basking in the glory of the redwoods,” the EBay listing reads. “Or, with the proper development, Bridgeville can become an economic powerhouse with the potential for generating a large cash flow.”

It could even “function as a remarkable tax shelter,” the town’s Realtor, Denise Stuart, said. “Ask your accountant.”

The property comes with a post office, a mile and a half of frontage on the bucolic Van Duzen River, four cabins, 10 houses and a cemetery. It also includes “a backhoe and generous supply of maintenance parts” to help in the mighty fix-it task, the EBay listing notes.

With bidders’ identities protected, residents and neighbors logging on to the Web site Wednesday were left to wonder as their town spiraled toward the clutches of some unknown mogul.

“It’s a post office and some shacks,” Shuman said. “The pictures [on EBay] look gorgeous, but it’s a little different in virtual reality here ....

“I guess somebody’s ego is so big that they’re just thrilled about owning a town,” she said. “That’s got to be it.”

Bridgeville was founded in 1865 by a trapper named Slaughter Robinson. Its heyday was in the era when the timber industry boomed, but for decades it has been little more than a collection of run-down buildings. Today, only the post office operates as a going concern.

Even the Lapples concede that owning the town, with its own water system and street lights, requires lots of maintenance. The family first sold Bridgeville in 1977 to the Pentacostal Faith Challengers, a religious group that couldn’t keep up with payments, Edward Lapple said.

“The county is kind of depressed as far as employment goes, so it’s difficult to find tenants who actually have a job,” he said. “It’s basically logging, growing pot or fishing.”

Other towns have been bought whole. In 1990, amid much media fanfare, actress Kim Basinger purchased the 1,800-acre town of Braseltown, Ga., for $20 million, promising a remake that never materialized.

Still, the more modest Bridgeville transaction may mark the first time an entire community has landed on the electronic auction block, an EBay spokesman told Associated Press.

“We’ve seen lots of houses and buildings and we’ve seen land and we’ve seen bridges,” said Chris Donlay, “but not a town.”

The Lapple family stumbled across Bridgeville three decades ago when they spotted a classified ad in the Los Angeles Times. They snatched up the town for $150,000 and moved north. The Lapples’ mother ran the store, but when she went blind, it closed and never reopened.

After she died, the children carried on, but the work was time-consuming.

“It really wasn’t something I wanted to do,” said Elizabeth Lapple, who envisions it as a haven for recreational hunters and fishermen. “I’ve got three other full-time businesses and four children.”

To Elizabeth, all that’s needed is a little attention. The town could sustain a year-round RV park, she said, and the store and cafe could be reopened.

The town’s postmaster, Rose Clarke, thinks Bridgeville would make a great location for a bed and breakfast.

“It’s gorgeous out here -- the river and the bridge -- and it’s so quiet,” she said.

*

Associated Press contributed to this report.