A while back I looked at a piece of property that had the acreage and distance that I wanted in a piece of dirt, but one of the tings that queered the deal was the road.
See, I don’t mind a piece of property that says in its listing “have to snowmobile in in the winter”. I have no problem with that. I have a fantasy of taking a week off over Christmas and ensconcing myself in my cozy little casa and watching the snow pile up outside as I listen to the fire in the woodstove crackle and I enjoy the utter lack of people.
But the problem is, while that sounds awesome there are other things to consider. If youre buying a piece of land with the intention of building on it, you need to get things there. And while a barely-a-road is great for keeping the Golden Horde at bay, it works against you when it comes to things like well-drilling rigs, propane trucks, cement mixers, prefab concrete septic vault flatbeds, cranes, and a bunch of other rather large and cumbersome vehicles that youre probably going to want to have to make things easy.
Could you build your dream bunker using just supplies you haul in on a small trailer on the back of your four wheeler? Sure…I’m sure it’s been done. But your expenses are going to multiply at an exponential rate. A dozen ten mile round trips to haul what could otherwise have been done in one fell swoop with a large flatbed truck is an expensive way to do business.
And so, we are back to the survivalists dilemma – you want remote enough to give you privacy and keep folks away, but you need it to have a level of accessibility that directly results in the opposite.
I suppose one tradeoff is to lower your expectations – either on the privacy and remoteness, or on the grandeur and scope of what you plan to build.
Of course, people will start mentioning in the comments how there are super 4×4 trucks that can navigate a 90-degree incline and climb hills that would freak a yak. Well, that may be true…but the odds that Billy Bob’s Well Drilling or Guido’s Concrete Pumping in the middle of Sheephump MT has those is….slim. Now, another option would be that you have a decent road to get in the vehicles and equipment you need and then once thats done you make the road indecent. There’s a thought.
And let’s not be confused…a simple dirt road is fine. There’s a lot of equipment that can be brought in on a regular dirt road. I’m talking about a road that is rutted by cattle, poor drainage, and a host of other factors…in addition to being narrow and bracketed at points by trees right up against the edge of the road.
So, what I’m saying here is that something I hadn’t thought about factoring into the decision process was the accessibility of heavy vehicles and equipment. Look, I love the idea of being far enough back in the sticks that every yahoo without a 4×4 is gonna look at the route to my place and go “Yeah, no.” But I can’t afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars doing some logistical workaround to a problem that is avoided by simply not having a goat trail for a road.
A good road for the good times can be turned into a bad road with a chainsaw and tractor, or even pioneer tools and lots of elbow grease. Falling trees in an interlocking criss cross pattern is effective at blocking roads. (xxxxxxxxxx)
Your point about a propane truck getting in and out is really good.
Even if you have a good solar panel system and a couple of wind turbines, having a big propane tank would be nice indeed.
Propane is easily solved with multiple 100# tanks that are portable in p/u for refill. This also helps with opsec. A hoist system makes loading and unloading quick and easy and a rotation system keeps supplies at optimum levels. This could also be cost effective as a second hand tank might be very inexpensive or free for taking if needs recertification.
Anonymous: I Have looked at, and game planned the same things and same factors as those you bring up. At some point, a realistic person will consider how an Ambulance, maybe a rural Fire Truck can navigate the Road from Hell. If you have a Female companion, and she needs to go to town (a job or shopping) you need to factor that in, unless you like Divorce lawyers. When constructing a retreat are you going to have a buttload of stairs to climb to get into said Refuge? Are you going to get old and have mobility problems? A ramp may be in order. All the feel good……needs to be tempered by reality, practicality. Forget Mr. Gummer He is fictional.
Along that same train of thought, since I am an old medic, I tend to think of “How does an ambulance get here? Howzabour an engine? Or a tanker? Maybe a couple engines and tankers, which means a nice reasonably level spot holding, say, 6 big ass fire apparatus? (apparati?)
All of which speaks to your “this is one bad road!” insight.
Don’t be a bummer VoteGummer
Goes with announcement from PA that they will not count third party candidate votes because they complied with Secretary of State rules instead of the law as a reversal of 4 years ago when they ruled the Sec of State set rules over the law. Funny how that works in one direction
Assuming that you are just thinking about the viability of this place for your lifetime, perhaps you could reassign your examine your assumptions. Could Give up…trees… for example, in exchange for a better road, and resulting better access for sports service? I’m thinking of something less remote (and therefore more populated)…like the equivalent of the Palouse in Washington. High plains, rolling hills. Not much in the way of trees or annual precipitation, but with an accessible water table. Get back a couple of miles beyond the road sightlines and you’d have all the privacy you want.
Sorry, Siri since I can’t keyboard anymore
Meant to say “re-examine“, “support services“
All good points. As a part time EMS we are going to do our best to help you.
But an difficult road really hurts YOUR Situation as we not going to high center our ambulance or firetruck helping you.
I personally have a serious chain and lock for the driveway and a pair of “hunting points ” in overwatch to remind folks to call first.
A drawbridge if built to support a dump truck would be nice BUT any obstacles with out fire “support ” is But an annoyance to rude visitors.
A sandbag hunting post is But a few hours work but always have 2+ with support for flanking rudeness.
Well you being a smart guy don’t forget about the concrete mixer and concrete pump trucks that will need access to build your insulated concrete form (ICF) casa that you know you need 🙂
When we built ours it was only about 200 yds off a county maintained dirt road so all we had to do was cut the driveway and the clearing for the home/yard. Did that ourselves, along with putting in the range and a few trails, with a D5-sized dozer I rented for a couple days. In the 20 years since I’ve rented smaller dozers and skid steers about half a dozen times for various projects, including regrading our dirt driveway each time. It’s fairly easy to do and not like I operate this equipment for a living or anything, the tracks and the weight of the machine do a lot of the work, then back drag it. Great way to intro yourself to the new neighbors if you’re smoothing out of the ruts on the private road that they use to access their property too. Not to mention one or more might be more experienced operators since they’ve probably done it before, or know someone who has, saving you time and money. Skid steer rental here is $275 a day or $1,100 for a week, including the trailer rental to haul it but fuel and delivery is extra if you need it of course.
Good luck, hope you find the property you’re looking for.
I have always been of the mind that road closure at will is the way to fend off unwanted company – be it with gates, trees, tank ditches…the key is being able to get in/out with as little view by the neighbors to what you are bringing/leaving as possible.
Too, I would not want a bad road in a part of the world known for its random forest fires.
From a preparedness angle if your goal is to be able to drive there at 3 am on the worst day of your life with a loaded up truck it would be kinda important to be able to drive there year around.
Do you have any local requirements for access to get building permits?
Out here one way they slow out of town building is by setting high requirements for access roads.
One of the reasons I don’t see us staying here long term.
I vote for making trail hard (or property entrance VERY concealed) for your privacy after it is built. Bu this does mean a Post Office box will be required (or take deliveries at employer which may be difficult / impossible). And the service / repair persons you want to fix your dead A/C or sanitary leach field may find it impossible to access.
The friendly neighbor with grader / dozer posted by Anon 1.25 sounds possible but may come with condition you will have to help them if the occasion is needed. That become one sided as time goes on.
Following. This is going to be your trade off or entry fee into the Uber redoubt club of property owners. You will need to have millions or really lots of money to burn through of liquid cash to buy that secluded, far away from humans spot, and the have funds to bring in everything needed and build up upon that property. Sure a handy pioneer can self build and putz along for a few years it will take to build up something on a budget, but is success that route reasonably certain. Without that super level of wealth you cannot segregate yourself from other people as many people like to fantasize about. There are too many people about really. The regular seasonal hikers, bicyclists, campers, hunters, fishers, tourons= tourist morons will be all about and around any rural areas anyway. No amount of gates, fences, and “muh barricade the road!” Will matter much in any atypical suvivalist’s wet dreams reality coming true. A plot of land or older farmer house in or around tiny hamlet towns is still way better than being raped in a blue hive. I do prefer the lone wolf method, but being around similar minded types of humanity will be helpful big picture wise. You will need those stores, fuel stations, services etc for your existence even if you think you can totally hide innawoods somewhere. It should be worth looking at suitable properties matching your specs that are already built up by a boomer that has those infrastructures in place and only needs your adjustments to your taste and styles. You will spend more than raw land of course, but in today’s dollars it will burn your money way faster for wells, concrete, lumber, permits?, etc. Folks fantasize about the Rawles redoubt standards of homesteads, like they think they deserve a 9/10 super hot wife, ha ha funny really. BTN, better than nothing, or anything better than wallowing in those blue hives is a win win. Happy hunting.
no man is an island. eventually the nogs will come calling, in numbers. you’ll need friends. there’s a reason pioneers didn’t build on mountaintops.
Find a place that’s on a county maintained gravel road at a minimum. You will keep busy enough just maintaining your access to it. If you’re that paranoid about hordes of people, just get yourself an used backhoe for peace of mind. You’re never going to find the ideal property you picture in your imagination. I settled on a lot of different issues when I bought my property 35 years ago, but I made improvements over the years and have been enjoying it ever since. If you wait much longer, you might as well just look for a nice Assisted Living complex in the woods somewhere.
I feel ya.
But Brad Angier did it. Had to backpack in sacks of cement. That’s dedication…or something
I turned down a similar property near Drummond for much the same reason: The road was adequate during three seasons but snowmobile only in the winter.
First time commenter. Can confirm what everyone else has said – barring unlimited funds, there are no perfect properties. We relocated not long ago to ‘mountains’ with only a fraction of your area’s elevation, but a steep wooded ridge is a steep wooded ridge. We looked at something even steeper and less accessible, but just getting fuel and/or occasional groceries would have been more than an hour’s drive instead of the 25 minutes we settled on (and yes, I know that is less likely when TSHTF but it’s necessary for now). We fortunately do not suffer from any chronic, debilitating medical issues but signed up for the AirMedCare Network (which, from its map, does cover limited areas in Montana) because it’s still an hour to the closest hospital.
We initially bought raw land before we purchased our current property, but totally miscalculated just how much time and money it would take to start from scratch. Putting in a driveway, a well, building structures, etc. – again, lots of time and money. We have a creek, but it’s way downhill (yes, we have a generator that can run the well pump and have considered solar and/or a buried holding tank – again, $$).
What we DO have is space and privacy (husband wisely insisted on a lot more acreage than we initially had in mind). We live at the dead-end of a dirt/gravel road in the middle of the woods, a few miles from an official ‘wilderness area.’ Closest ‘neighbor’ is half a mile on the other side of the road (who has long planned to drop some trees to block said road if/when trouble comes). The beginning of our driveway is grass and gravel, but the original owner/builder had the rest (not visible from the road) asphalted years ago because the steep slope kept washing out with the rain. HUGE blessing and advantage for us. So too the wood stove, the well, the mini-splits, the very large propane tank, and the generator.
Sure, we ultimately would love more – a bigger ICF house instead of a wooden cabin, even more propane and a buried gas tank, a full solar array, a greenhouse, etc. But in this case we wisely chose not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We considered all the inherent difficulties of ‘bugging out’ and the costs of maintaining and securing a mostly empty retreat property, and we just sold it all and moved (yes we are blessed that my husband can work remotely). Our lives are immeasurably better and we love being mostly alone up in the woods (with a few solid ‘neighbors’). We are not hard core ‘survivalists’ with lots of woodcraft but we’ve done what we can to secure ourselves from what we believe is coming.
As the old saying goes, land is something they’re not making any more of. And as the cost invariably rises and the number of humanoids on the earth increases exponentially, buying a piece of it sooner rather than later seemed wise to us.
Randy Weaver was a Green Beret and thought he was remote enough. Pile enough bodies and you will be left alone. Other wise someone will crash your party.
Most successful indigenous people were nomads and didn’t ‘own’ land, the concept was abstract of senseless to them. When the game got scarce, move on, water dried up, firewood used, water turned bad, cockroaches/mice got too thick they left and went to better land.
Thoreau felt owning land made one a slave to it, maybe he was right. Randy Weaver talked about firearms to someone he barely knew then agreed to supply an NFA item to be a nice guy. Big mistake.
PS: according to Wiki, Randy Weaver was never a Green Beret or in Special Forces. He did have a bad lawyer and apparently law enforcement was bored and wanted something to do. Nothing more dangerous than a bored LEO.
Gerry Spence I think was one helluva lawyer.. Wrote a good book named FROM FREEDOM TO SLAVERY
Feds weren’t bored they had a political agenda(remember Janet Reno and the Clintons?) that looks a lot like it is culminating in the current and near future. You got Diversified!
Amazes me that some folks here are unclear on the concepts.
One of those is the idea of asking the gov (and paying a fee!!!) for the “right” to build something on your remote property. 30 years ago I bought my Appalachian 150 acre ‘end of the holler’ property and built whatever I so desired (all hand mixed concrete, hauled EVERYTHING in by myself and built whatever TF I wanted to build. Road is now impassable to anything but a 4wheeler/dirtbike/hiker and thats the way I like it. I dont live there but do check that my hidden preps are still secure.
You do You, Cmdr. Dont let the negative nancys get you down.
There’s no Bad Road that a Dozer (and good Operator) can’t turn into a Good Road. Access to a Property should Not be a ‘Deciding Factor’ in rejecting an otherwise good Site. Property with Frontage on a County Road, paved or not, that has No Road/Path at all lets you Design and Construct one that provides as Good Access as you want/Need while still letting you make ‘Features’ that if necessary, can make it Impassible.
Seriously, if you are considering Building a Remote/Off-Grid House/Compound, constructing Road is going to be a minor Cost in the whole Equation..
If it’s thirteen miles of bad road to get to the property, are you suggesting I pay for someone to grade/improve thirteen miles of road I dont even own?
I bought my BOL in rural east Texas two years ago. It had to double as a weekend lake house for approval from the missuz. And yeah, that approval is 100% necessary. And yeah, the world HASN’T ended anytime in the last 500 years*, so having dual use is important. Timing the market is easy compared to timing the apocalypse.
Even being in the woods with an almost 2 hour round trip to the nearest Lowes, and minimum 1 hour round trip to a grocery store, I’ve got neighbors. The country is big, but people clump. They clump where there are roads, rivers, lakes, rail nexus, and other natural or artificial attractions. So you end up having neighbors anywhere you would WANT to build.
Our leftover and expired Property Owners Association covers the 100 lots in our little sub-division. (ie a parcel or land grant was divided, then divided again.) Maintaining the road is the biggest point of conflict and the biggest expense. We’ve got free riders, people on fixed income that can’t afford any more money, and new money weekenders in their grandparents’ homes. People are happy to bitch about pot holes and washouts, but ask for $5/month to cover diesel for the tractor and the box blade, and suddenly they are just a bad smell on the breeze. And yet there are other people contributing their time, and some their money to maintain or improve common areas, myself included.
The biggest surprise to me was that even among 60 property holding families, there are many people who have never met their neighbors here, despite living next door for 40 years. They also NEVER forget a slight, or a misstep. And some of them know everyone’s business. Some have been feuding for those 40 years.
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They pay attention, know who’s rented heavy equipment, who called a septic guy, who felled trees and stacked firewood. They have roots going back a couple of hundred years, and they know their relationship to everyone (that they know.) And if they don’t know you or their relationship to you, they will try to find out before doing anything substantial with or for you.
What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t have family in your rural area BOL, and there are ANY people at all around, you can’t really lone wolf. They will know you are there, they will pay attention to figure out if you are a threat to them, they will speculate about you with friends, clerks, storekeepers, delivery people, and strangers.
Much better in my estimation to work hard at becoming part of the community. Be a good guy who is reliable. Be the guy who helps out when needed. Do what you say you’ll do. Realize you are the new guy. You want to be inside the ring when they circle the wagons. It takes time and a lot of work and I’m just making progress after two years.
You need to show that you can work hard. I think that two weeks on heavy equipment removing broken concrete and re-grading around my house made more difference in how people saw me than anything else I could have done. Everyone in the neighborhood saw and heard me working hard, and with a skill they understand.
Who you know, and even more importantly, who knows you, is going to be the most important factor in your quality of life if things go sideways.
People are people, and human factors are going to be crucially important. Your neighbors will either stand with you, or see you as a resource to exploit. Picking good neighbors and being a good neighbor is probably more important than how much acreage or how far from the nearest supermarket.
nick
*yeah, locally there have been apocalypses but they didn’t last… except maybe Sumer, or Ninevah. And the biggest lesson to learn is that when it REALLY hits the fan, everyone LEAVES.
CZ – have you considered purchasing some land with several like minded friends to live together as a self supporting community ? Or maybe you know a rancher that may be of need of somebody closer to them for the same reason ?
Living by your lonesome may sound good, but sooner or later – it is good to have a friendly neighbor close by to help you when things go south.