Why did tiny Tiller, Oregon capture the world's imagination when put up for sale? (photos, video)

The entire town of Tiller, Oregon, is up for sale

If you drive very slowly on the country highway fronting downtown Tiller, Oregon, the ride will take about three minutes from end to end. And yet, this remote, unknown and mostly unoccupied pinpoint on the map has captured the imagination of people around the world.

When news spread that this tiny town, aligned with the South Umpqua River, hidden in the hillside and devoid of cellphone towers, was for sale, it touched a universal nerve. To many, it seemed idyllic.

Imagine, owning an entire town that could be remade to your liking.

Comments posted with news stories and calls into radio shows revealed that Tiller had become a mythical setting for people who couldn't afford the $3.85 million price tag but still yearned for a small part of this verdant Shangri-La.

After The Oregonian/OregonLive broke the story about an anonymous buyer, out-of-work carpenters emailed that they were ready to pack up their tools and restore the creaky old buildings. Preachers lamented that one of the few remaining residents of the sleepy, old timber town was a pastor, dashing their hopes of leading the little church.

Idealists believed Tiller could become a community that solves overwhelming social issues by providing tiny houses for the homeless and love to anyone who needs it. One young woman thought Tiller could be the epicenter of free hugs.

People speculated that the utopia launched here could become a model of hope for other forlorn and forgotten people and places.

Men and women who had never been to the Pacific Northwest fell in love with the idea and ideal of Tiller. They referred to it by name as if it were their hometown. They offered to volunteer to nurture its rebirth; to reignite the workshops, restock grocery store shelves, re-open the school.

They believed that the unincorporated town, with a scattering of unsteady shelters and broken dreams, was more than the sum of its parts.

Tiller? That speck about 225 miles south of Portland?

How did this easily forgettable dot become a captivating story for CBS and the BBC, Time and Fortune magazines, tree-hugging Mother Nature Network and the climate-change challenging Drudge Report?

The trustee of the family estate who put Tiller up for sale thinks he knows.

Richard ("Rick") Caswell, Jr., 66, points to a map that's predominately green. It shows the Umpqua National Forest and Bureau of Land Management acres that dwarf the modest homes and other weather-beaten structures that make up the town.

He thinks the appeal is largely due to geography.

Depending on the direction you take on Oregon Route 227, you could be in Seven Feathers casino in Canyonville in 25 minutes or head the other way to raft the Rogue River. It's less than a two-hour drive to Crater Lake National Park or 40 minutes in the opposite direction to the Rogue Valley International Airport in Medford.

Then there's the climate. Tiller is cooler than Medford, where Caswell lives, and dryer than Roseburg to the west. There's no snow at this elevation and unlike the coast, 200 inches of rain don't pour down each year.

But more than the facts and figures of Tiller are the emotional pulls. There are no comps an appraiser can find to set a price for owning an entire town.

The community church, which attracts about 50 people during Sunday services, isn't for sale. Neither is the parsonage, the retired school teacher's house or the volunteer-staffed fire station. But pretty much everything else is, including the land underneath the post office, which was established here in 1902.

The 29 different tax lots, making up 257 contiguous acres, are already zoned for rural commercial, industrial, residential, agricultural, farm forest and timber resource use, which can fast forward a developer and cut through a lot of redtape.

"I use the term 'town' loosely, because I don't want to imply it's a fiefdom," says Caswell. "It's an unincorporated town subject to the laws and zoning of Douglas County."

He adds with a smile, "I'm just the seller who wanted to present a canvas, here's what we got, and let everyone's imagination run with it."

And people did. If there's an idea you can think of, someone has proposed it for Tiller.

During an hours-long interview on April 25, Caswell spoke eloquently about his parents' beloved respite on the river, the community's make-up and his wishes for the town's future.

Caswell's father, Richard Caswell, Sr., was a Medford real estate professional with a long career selling and managing commercial ranching properties. He also had a degree in animal science from UC Davis, and as a child, he grew up in Salinas, California, where his father was friends with John Steinbeck. Appreciating the country is part of the Caswell family heritage.

Caswell's father started acquiring land here in the 1970s. A small parcel on the river with two old barracks became the family's vacation home, where summers were spent fishing, and everyone gathered for holidays.

The family felt protective of the slowly declining town. Looking across the river from his deck, Caswell's father saw a forest that was prime to be cut. He bought that land to save the view. Rick Caswell points to the green expanse still on his new map.

When the timber industry collapsed in the early 1990s, the mills closed and much of Tiller's population moved away. With each shift, the family bought properties as they came available, and cleared away the junkyard, old logging equipment and other debris.

"Dad was a dreamer and an idealist," says Caswell. "He had a big vision," but no intention of stitching together an entire town like a giant hand-made quilt.

But that's what happened.

"It wasn't so much to acquire a town but to make each piece more desirable on its own," says Caswell. "But every time he added one, I cringed because there would come a day when it would be time to sell."

In 2014, after 64 years of marriage, Caswell's dad and mom, Barbara, died within months of each other. Their ashes were laid to rest on the river that flowed by their Tiller home.

Caswell and his three sisters, two of whom had lived in Tiller, decided they wanted to sell, and that job fell on his shoulders.

"The timber industry in this region had died. My parents had died. The school closed," and one of the owners of the general store had died, he says. "The town was in dire straits."

Caswell set the price at $3.5 million for his family's land plus the general store, whose surviving owner agreed to sell it as part of a package. The school district wanted in, too, and asked for $350,000 for the old elementary school, which started in the late 1800s as a one-room schoolhouse. That piece includes the expanded school building, track, playground and 6.58 acres.

Listing agent Garrett Zoller of Medford-based Land and Wildlife Realty was hired to sell everything. Once the story went viral, his office was bombarded with calls from media and potential buyers, from the U.K. to China. Regardless of their location, they all asked about purchasing the American Dream. "They used those words," Zoller says. "They also were interested in 'getting back to the land.'"

An ode to the myth of the Wild West? Or more recent nostalgia. Old-timers here talk about the glory days of Tiller, when people would arrive in a horse and buggy for the annual rodeo.

Or maybe it's just the present-day prospects of getting a job, getting ahead.

In the end, despite a flurry of global interest, the first accepted offer came from two men living in Ashland, about a 90-minute drive  from Tiller, and near the California-Oregon border. Zoller says the buyers' plan is to help people live sustainably in a place with a long growing season and productive soils.

Still unknown are the names or intentions of the buyers, who are funded by money from California. They were the first to sign a contract on March 12. Soon afterward, two back-up offers at full price came in. Inquiries and requests for a tour haven't stopped rolling in.

Zoller and Caswell heard a proposal that the pre-made town, with sidewalks, fire hydrants and water rights, could become a co-housing community with permaculture as the focus.

Or a satellite college campus, a real life SimCity, to teach students about business, construction, forestry, rivers, creeks and hospitality in a massive learn-by-doing lab.

Or a film studio backlot.

Others wanting to take Tiller into their own hands could be loosely classified as do-gooders, developers and conservationists, says a person close to the transaction.

And they would probably all get along, says Caswell.

"If you look at Tiller, you will find a cross section of America, of all kinds of leaning," he says. "There are Christians, pioneer ranching families that may have one point of view, and commune-surviving hippies who are socialistic and environmental inclined.

"What differentiates Tiller is that these people can work together, have coffee together. It's not that everyone's so antagonistic that they can't talk anymore," he says.

Tiller is a microcosm of cultural change, too. Longtime residents have seen jobs move from trapping, mining, logging and a ranching economy to nothing.

"The land lay fallow for years," says Caswell. "Now it's ready to become something else, and people, who were born and grew up here and cried when the school closed because that's where they went to kindergarten, don't know what's happening."

Emotions are high.

Quiet holdout Angela Hunt has had a front-row view of the changes. She and her late husband bought their home near Tiller Elementary School more than 40 years ago. She was a teacher there and he worked for the Tiller Ranger District.

She is not selling. "I am very happy in Tiller," she wrote in an email.

Her son, Pete, recently moved back to his family's home with his wife, their twins and his mother-in-law after living several years in Thailand.

"I've traveled all around the country and throughout Asia, and can honestly say that Tiller remains one of the most beautiful places I've ever been," he says.

Pete Hunt agrees with Caswell that the small town supports a close-knit community, and he says residents want the new owners to succeed with their investment "while respecting the aesthetics and values of this unique spot along the river."

So it comes back to Tiller's unknown future.

Caswell has no predictions.

"What happens to the property is going to be determined by what I call the imagination of the buyer and the limitations of the bankroll," he says. "They will determine what becomes of Tiller."

— Janet Eastman