CAL-NEV-ARI, Nevada >> A mining company that serves the agriculture industry has acquired most of a small town on a desert highway with an aircraft airstrip near the state borders of California , from Nevada and Arizona, a newspaper reported.

Universal Green Technology paid $ 8 million for Cal-Nev-Ari, a town near US Highway 95, about 70 miles south of Las Vegas.

Property records show the sale by city co-founder Nancy Kidwell closed in late July, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported today.

The 550-acre sale includes the unpaved airstrip, motel, RV park, mobile home park, convenience store, and the town’s casino and restaurant.

Kidwell, who is 80, has tried for years to sell his possessions in the remote desert outpost with well water and a cluster of houses.

Universal Green Technology, Inc. is majority owned by Heart of Nature. Company president Jerry Tyler told the Review-Journal that he plans to build a 100,000-square-foot warehouse to house his machines that make products for agricultural customers.

He said the facility would be located across from homes in Cal-Nev-Ari and would not produce foul odors. The treatment involves tree sap and almost smells like it was baked bread, he said.

Tyler predicted an increase in Cal-Nev-Ari’s population, more staff quarters, more restaurants, and a larger hotel.

Kidwell and her late husband Everette “Slim” Kidwell founded Cal-Nev-Ari in the mid-1960s, after noticing his then-abandoned airstrip while flying overhead.

The Kidwells acquired over 600 acres from the federal government, named the city after its home state and the two nearby, and, as the Los Angeles Times reported, put up a sign that read: ” Cal-Nev-Ari, Population: 4 Watch us grow.

The other two residents were their cat and their dog.

In 2010, the US census put the population at 244 people.

Slim, a flight instructor, died in 1983. A decade later, Nancy Kidwell married Verne “Ace” Kidwell, Slim’s son from a previous marriage. He died in 2011.