Real life “Schitt’s Creek”: For $2.5M, this adult circus bought a whole town

Spiegelworld beat out religious cults, crypto investors and a party train for the bid to buy Nipton, California

Spiegelworld's Ross Mollison (Illustration by The Real Deal with Getty)
Spiegelworld's Ross Mollison (Illustration by The Real Deal with Getty)

Ever heard the one about the circus that bought a town?

It’s a true story. The adult circus Spiegelworld, led by Australian founder Ross Mollison, bought the 80-acre town of Nipton, California, the Wall Street Journal reported. Mollison told the outlet he has no desire to build a resort, but instead envisions a “circus village.”

Mollison’s Spiegelworld is best known for its “Absinthe” show that runs out of a tent at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. It also runs “Atomic Saloon” and “Opium” in Las Vegas, and the Hook in Atlanta. Its shows have been described as “riotous,” “raunchy,” and “rowdy.”

Before Mollison and his acrobats came along, Nipton had been owned by a California couple for decades. Jerry Freeman surprised his wife, Roxanne Lang, by buying the town for $200,000 in the early 1980s. After Freeman died in 2016, Lang set out to sell the property, first striking a deal with the Phoenix-based cannabis company American Green for $5 million in 2017, the Los Angeles Times reported.

American Green hoped to transform Nipton into a stoner’s paradise, with an Old West-themed “bud and breakfast,” bong and pipe boutiques, and locally bottled cannabis beverages, according to the outlet.

That didn’t quite pan out. In 2018, American Green sold Nipton to Scottsdale-based Delta International Oil & Gas for $7.7 million. Delta International assumed $3.7 million in debt in the purchase, and American Green signed a contract to keep developing the town.

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Lang told the Wall Street Journal that payments on the debt eventually stopped coming, and she had to foreclose on Nipton. She relisted the town for $2.8 million in early 2021. Among the interested buyers were crypto investors, leaders of apparent religious cults, a group hoping to operate a party train from Las Vegas, and an investment group from Brazil, she told the outlet.

In early 2022, Lang accepted Mollison’s $2.5 million offer.

Now, a couple who usually builds sets for Spiegelworld joined the two dozen residents in Nipton to begin fixing up Mollison’s circus village.

“What if an audacious circus company purchased a small town in the middle of the Mojave Desert?” reads a page for Nipton on the circus’ website. “We can’t wait to see what happens.”

— Kate Hinsche