Land of the loners: Auction offers remote northern properties

      State officials say a planned April 2 auction of 60,000 acres in Northern Nevada is one of the largest Nevada land sales of its kind in this century.
      They, however, warn buyers and speculators to study the real estate and sales terms closely before submitting bids that start at about $40,000 for square-mile tracts.
      "It's a buyer-beware situation," said Robert Stewart, a planner with the Nevada Division of State Lands. "Most of it is going to be sagebrush, rolling country, sandy soil" and has been used for cattle grazing.
      "This is cowboy property eight to 10 miles off the freeway," broker John Blom told potential bidders at a sales conference at The Orleans.
      The land is within 20 miles along each side of a 350-mile stretch of Interstate 80 between Reno and Utah.
      LFC Marketing Group Inc. is using the allure of the Wild West for its marketing campaign.
      A newspaper advertisement shows covered wagons in a scene reminiscent of the races to establish homesteads in Oklahoma in the late 1800s. LFC calls the auction the "Nevada Land Rush."
      The parcels have a history of their own. The Central Pacific railroad received the sections from the federal government for building the western segment of the first transcontinental rail line in the United States in 1869.
      In October 1995, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway sold about 1.4 million acres of land, most of it from the original federal grants.
      Nevada Land -- a joint venture of an investment fund managed by the Morgan Stanley Group of New York and the Western Water Co. of La Jolla, Calif. -- bought the land for an undisclosed price, Nevada Land president Jeffry David said.
      Santa Fe Pacific Gold Corp., a railroad spinoff based in Albuquerque, N.M., holds mineral interests in many of the parcels.
      Most of the 60,000 acres being auctioned, however, remains untouched by modern civilization. It is being sold in square-mile parcels without electric power connections.
      The parcels are being sold without mineral rights and without water rights for agricultural, commercial or industrial uses. State law, nevertheless, allows families to draw as much as 1,800 gallons daily from wells for household and garden uses.
      "To me, it's for the more eccentric buyer who basically wants to own a parcel of Nevada land," said Laura Fox, an official with the Nevada Real Estate Division, in a telephone conversation.
      Nevada Land & Resource Co., the property seller, has received inquiries from as far away as Hong Kong, England and Germany, David said.
      About 50 people attended the Las Vegas sales conference on the auction last week.
      "We want to buy the property and sit in the middle of it and not have anybody around," said Diane Cooper, a real estate saleswoman from Pahrump.
      Jason Pagan, general partner of a family commercial real estate firm on the Hawaiian island of Maui, was excited also, calling a square mile "a huge piece of property."
      Said Todd Randall, a craps dealer at the MGM Grand: "I'm young, and 20 years from now, it may be worth something."
      Others asked about the possibility of subdividing the property for resale.
      Blom, vice president of the auction marketers, talked about Nevada's explosive population growth at the conference and mentioned big name companies with offices in Reno. He asked how many of the attendees would have liked to buy a section of land outside Las Vegas a decade ago.
      "This is what we're talking about tonight," Blom said.
      Bloom showed a slide of city skyscrapers. He avoided predicting the urbanization of the I-80 corridor, but added, "I'm not going to say it's not going to look like this."
      "You don't know what is going to happen" with the land, David said. "I don't think we'll see skyscrapers in our lifetime here."
      David said many of the 100 parcels are within 15-minute drives to towns such as Lovelock, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Carlin, Elko and Wells.
      The land is suitable for cattle grazing, rural residential development, hunting for upland game birds and deer, trout fishing in mountain streams, and potentially gold or silver mining.
      While the buyers won't get mineral rights with the deeds, a mining company must pay the owner for use of the land during mineral exploration and mining, experts said.
      Even if there is no gold, the seller can brag about the sheer amount of land being sold.
      Joan Buchanan, administrator of the Nevada Real Estate Division, has no doubt the 60,000-acre auction will be the largest land sale of its kind in Nevada during the 20th century.
      "We've never run into a bigger one," David said.
      Stewart believes some private ranch sales may have involved more acreage. The auction is attracting "probably more potential buyers than anything else," Stewart said.
      The auction represents the first opportunity for individuals to buy the 100 sections since the government gave them to the railroad more than 100 years ago. But it probably won't be the last.
      Nevada Land still will have about 1.3 million acres and is negotiating with ranchers, miners and other prospective buyers, company officials said.