What happens when a circus buys a town?

The small community of Nipton, Calif., is living through the experiment.

Town Hall?

The 80-acre plot of dusty land on the edge of the Mojave Desert, boasting a general store and a couple dozen or so inhabitants, was privately owned for decades by a married couple and then put on the block several years ago.

In early 2022, along came an unusual buyer. Spiegelworld, a Las Vegas-based theater company known for adult-themed acrobatic performances, quietly acquired Nipton for more than $2.5 million in cash.

Spiegelworld has never owned or operated a town before.

The company is best known for its “unapologetically raunchy” shows on the Las Vegas Strip, including one called “Absinthe” at Caesars Palace, an old-timey spectacle featuring scantily-clad performers in a small tent space.

Ross Mollison is Spiegelworld's founder and is known as its "impresario extraordinaire."

Photo: Adam Shane

In the months since owning Nipton, Spiegelworld has had to contend with the complicated reality of governing a town. The company and its employees have cleaned up 250 tons of debris, tangled with electrical and septic-tank snafus and met Nipton’s quirky, longtime residents.

Ross Mollison, Spiegelworld’s Australian founder, isn’t concerned about his lack of town-managing experience, and plans to make Nipton the base of the company’s “global operations.” He has a grand vision for Nipton, though he concedes he hasn’t worked out all the details. It includes theater performances, an art park and perhaps a restaurant built high in the town’s grove of Eucalyptus trees.

Nipton’s lengthy for-sale status is reminiscent of the television town “Schitt’s Creek,” whose fictional owners long tried to unload it. Not even the creators of that award-winning comedy series invented an outcome this unexpected.

“Imagine it’s ‘Schitt’s Creek’ but owned by a circus,” says Mr. Mollison.

Located about an hour from Las Vegas, Nipton has about 25 residents, give or take, many of whom live in an RV park. It features a small hotel named “Hotel California,” an old schoolhouse, a trading post and several large art sculptures trucked in from Burning Man, the famous Nevada festival.

Among Nipton’s features is an inn called the Hotel California.

Photo: Angela Owens/The Wall Street Journal

There is nothing around for miles, and the temperature can soar well past 100 degrees come summer. Multiple times a day, the Union Pacific Railroad train rumbles across the property.

Nipton had been owned since the 1980s by Jerry Freeman and Roxanne Lang, a California couple who bought it on a whim for about $200,000. (Actually it was Mr. Freeman who bought it on a whim, and surprised his wife.)

When her husband died in 2016, Ms. Lang embarked on a multiyear struggle to sell Nipton that truly was worth a television show. A cannabis company bought the town in 2017, with financing from Ms. Lang, and hoped to turn it into an event space for Instagram influencers to showcase marijuana products. Eventually the company stopped making payments, and Ms. Lang says she had to foreclose.

She put the town back on the market in early 2021 for $2.75 million and drew interest from a grab bag of potential buyers. There were groups who seemed to be operating religious cults, cryptocurrency investors, a crew that wanted to run a party train from Las Vegas, and “some people from Brazil, one of whom was a dentist,” says Ms. Lang.

That is perhaps why, when a circus made an overture, she didn’t find the offer strange. “They have their own way of doing things,” she says. “They love Nipton.”

Mr. Mollison, known as Spiegelworld’s “impresario extraordinaire,” says he grew attached to Nipton on a visit from Vegas.

“The sense of remoteness — it reminds me of being in Australia,” he says.

Nipton encompasses about 80 acres on the edge of the Mojave Desert.

Photo: Angela Owens/The Wall Street Journal

Spiegelworld aims to turn Nipton into a “circus village,” where artists and performers can work, but the particulars aren’t yet clear. (Spiegelworld is named for the Belgian “spiegeltent,” a traveling tent decorated with mirrors and used for entertainment.)

“I don’t want to build a resort,” Mr. Mollison says. “This is a very high-end circus. At the same time it’s filled with character and personality.”

Mr. Mollison and his team have a lot of ideas, among them: creating a giant sculpture park, such as New York’s Storm King Art Center; opening a skydiving club; bringing in live magicians and Hula-Hoop performances (“but nothing cheesy, I don’t like cheesy,” Mr. Mollison says); making underground accommodations in a bunker area beneath Nipton; and building a performance venue in a grove of Eucalyptus trees (though “I’m probably not going to import koalas or anything,” Mr. Mollison says).

“There could be an element of `permanent Burning Man’ ” about Nipton, he adds.

Before anything can get built though, Spiegelworld has had to grapple with the current state of the town. It brought in as caretakers two of its prop builders already living in the desert, Alex and Frank Strebel, and their five chickens.

“It felt so quaint and community-oriented,” says Ms. Strebel. “We could definitely see it needed a lot of work.”

Using a tractor and their own bare hands, the Strebels have spent months cleaning up what they estimate is about 250 tons of debris. While the town has trash service, larger castoffs and half-finished projects got left behind. In an old hay barn, the couple found piles of disintegrating mattresses. Old appliances and parts were scattered about. A handful of water heaters lay rusting on the property.

The couple spent an entire day figuring out which electrical breakers turned on the lights in several small cabins; one of the breakers ended up being in a bathroom. One of Nipton’s septic tanks was backed up. (Both issues have since been fixed.) They tore down a series of weathered teepees.

“There were a lot of Band-Aids we had to really fix,” Mr. Strebel says.

Still, they describe the town as a living-history lesson. “Over in the art yard, there is still the bunker where they used the dynamite for the mines,” Ms. Strebel says.

Local residents have been accommodating, particularly Jim Eslinger, Nipton’s unofficial mayor, who’s been there some 14 years. Mr. Eslinger, a former long-haul truck driver, says he told Spiegelworld he is included in the purchase of the town.

“I’ve met quite a few of the acrobats,” Mr. Eslinger says. “They’re awesome people and what I hear is they have some really good shows.”

Some of Spiegelworld's affiliated performers and artists visit Nipton.

Photo: Spiegelworld

Former town caretaker Stephen Shearin says he departed to help run an upscale glamping area in Southern California.

“When the new guys got there, they definitely had a plan,” Mr. Shearin says. “I wasn’t a part of it for the long term.” (“Stephen has gone on to other opportunities,” Mr. Mollison, of Spiegelworld, says.)

After surviving the pandemic, and the accompanying closure of shows in Las Vegas, Mr. Mollison says he’s confident in Spiegelworld’s ability to run Nipton.

“We will not fail because we’re relentless and we love this place,” he says.

Write to Kirsten Grind at kirsten.grind@wsj.com