Struggling Single Dad Buys $460 Abandoned Sawmill—Finds Secret Vault With Lumber Baron's $120M

Описание: The bank called at seven in the morning to inform Nathan Cole that his account had been closed for excessive overdrafts, the automated voice offering no sympathy as it explained that his last paycheck had bounced and he now owed the bank two hundred and seventeen dollars in fees he couldn't pay. His eight-year-old son Jackson stood in the doorway of their studio apartment wearing shoes with soles that flapped when he walked, asking in the careful voice children develop when they know money is tight whether they had enough for breakfast before school.

Nathan looked at his son, seeing himself at that age in the careful way Jackson held his shoulders, in the way he'd learned not to ask for things that cost money, in the resigned acceptance that breakfast might be cereal with water because they'd run out of milk three days ago. The construction company Nathan had worked for had gone under two months earlier, and every temp job since had lasted just long enough to disqualify him from unemployment but not long enough to catch up on the bills that multiplied faster than he could count them.

The eviction notice was taped to their door when Nathan returned from dropping Jackson at school, thirty days to vacate a studio apartment they'd lived in for nine months since Jackson's mother had decided single parenthood wasn't what she'd signed up for and had left for California with a man she'd met online. The note on the kitchen table had been brief—"I can't do this anymore. He's better off with you."—and Nathan had been navigating solo parenthood ever since, each day a calculation of which bill could be delayed, which need could wait, which sacrifice Jackson wouldn't notice.

That afternoon, Nathan sat in the public library using their free wifi to search rental listings that all required first month, last month, and security deposit he didn't have. His phone was two days from being shut off for non-payment. His truck had been repossessed last week. He was searching bus routes to cheaper neighborhoods when an advertisement appeared that seemed designed for someone at the absolute end of their options.

County foreclosure auction, industrial property with timber rights. Riverside Sawmill, 8.7 acres including main mill building, kiln house, and timber storage yards. Minimum bid four hundred dollars. Property sold as-is, buyer assumes all liens and back taxes.

The photographs showed a sprawling complex of weathered buildings that looked like they'd been slowly surrendering to gravity for decades. The main sawmill was massive, maybe two hundred feet long, its corrugated metal siding rust-stained and punctured in places. A brick chimney rose from what must have been the kiln house, its mortar crumbling. Piles of rotting lumber filled yards that had once held fresh-cut timber, and the whole property had the desolate quality of places the economy had abandoned.