Town of Monse for sale for $575,000
For the last six months, this 60-acre town with only seven residents and no business or industry to speak of has been on the market.
“Right now, it’s nearly a ghost town,” said Jay Roberson, an agent with Laura Mounter Real Estate, which has the listing.
In late December, the northern California town of Bridgeville — 80 acres, 13 homes and a cemetery — sold for almost $1.8 million on the online auction site, eBay.
Monse (pronounced mahnz) sits on a placid stretch of the Okanogan River, seven miles northeast of Brewster in north-central Washington.
Selling points: Fiber optics, water rights, railroad access, a public boat launch, a bridge and bass fishing.
Fritz Van Doren, the town’s owner since 1974, moved to East Wenatchee four years ago with his wife, Donna, and their three school-age children.
Roberson said the listing has generated about two calls a week. Prospective buyers have expressed interest in it as a potential summer camp or executive retreat, he said.
At the intersection of Monse Bridge Road and Monse River Road, the general store, built in 1914, stands on the northwest corner next to a dilapidated shack that used to be the post office.
The store’s been closed since 1968, but the building has a fiber-optic terminal because it’s near a large array of telecommunications satellite dishes, Van Doren said.
Lifelong area residents Cub Crossland, 81, and Jean Reese, 82, remember when Monse was popular for rodeos and country dances. Crossland’s mother ran the post office, and he made his living as a Teamster on construction projects that included the Columbia River dams.
When Reese was a girl, folks used to gather at a schoolhouse near Chicken Creek for all-night dances. They would bring bedding for their children, who slept on the floor or on top of tables while the grown-ups danced until dawn, Reese recalled.
During the winter when the weather was bad, her grandfather would take her to school on his sled, picking up several other children along the way. Otherwise, she walked three miles to and from school.
She and Crossland said they couldn’t recall more than 15 people living in Monse.
“It seemed like everybody was too poor to go anywhere else,” Crossland said.
But Roberson said Monse was home to about 700 people at its peak.
“It was a steamboat stop in the late 1800s,” he said.
Monse is believed to have started as a trading post, operated intermittently by a prospector between trips to Spokane, a 300-mile round-trip made with a four-horse team and wagon.
By 1916, Monse had become a supply center for homesteaders.
The Tacoma Public Library’s database on Washington place names said the town was first called Swanson and, later, Swansea.
“On Oct. 24, 1916 ... citizens changed it to the present name in commemoration of the first clash between British and German armies during World War I ... which became known as the Battle of Mons in Belgium. The final ’e’ was added in error.”