The tiny town of Nipton is described even by its own lifelong residents as a “blink and you’ll miss it” location in Nevada. It’s not exactly a tourist hotspot, populated with old west-style buildings, including the Nipton Trading Post and a sole five-bed hotel built in the early 1900s. Depending on the season, the unincorporated area is home to only about a dozen people and spans just 80 acres.
Recently, a host of unusual performers has been residing in a small rural town, and these performers came with the circus Spiegelworld. An entertainment and circus company based in Las Vegas, Spiegelworld bought the entire town in 2022 for $2.5 million. This isolated plot of land, roughly an hour’s drive from Vegas and the same distance from the nearest grocery store is now known as Spiegelworld’s “global headquarters” or, more simply, the “circus town”.
“I was totally bewitched by the whole thing,” Ross Mollison, Spiegelworld’s founder, said of his first visit to Nipton. “It was just gorgeous.”
A Backstage Town
Mollison, whose preferred job title is “impresario extraordinaire,” had unexpectedly grand plans for his new town. And in the nearly three years since its sale, Nipton has slowly transformed into the circus haven of Mollison’s dreams. Nipton now functions as both a retreat and a rehearsal space for Spiegelworld circus performers, who regularly filter into the remote town to develop new acts for Spiegelworld shows in Vegas and to simply escape from the stage for a few days.
In other words, Mollison says: “We’re creating our own little Disneyland.”
Many members of that circus community have since ventured to Nipton, including Max Baumgarten, who describes himself as a comedic actor with “a specialty within the world of clowns.”
Each night, the performers bunk together in Nipton’s one hotel, and each day, they move between the town’s different buildings to rehearse their new show. Their favorite place to practice has been an old schoolhouse built in the 1930s, an unassuming one-room space with a tin roof. Its weathered wooden floor and high ceilings give the building the feel of an upscale dance studio—just in the middle of nowhere.
“Being away from all the distractions and having that be your only job, with people who are that skilled—you can make so much,” Baumgarten said.
From Mundane to Magical
The ultimate goal has been to turn “magical” Nipton, as signs for the town promise, into an oasis for Spiegelworld performers, seasonal miners, and other locals who have lived there for years. Because the town has no local government, if non-Spiegelworld residents have any issues, they typically take them up with Alex and Frank. And while some people have kept to themselves since the circus came to town, others have sought a front-row seat to the spectacle.
“So hard work is no stranger to either party,” Frank added.
With Frank and Alex’s help, the next major phase of work in Nipton will involve revamping the hotel and a cluster of metallic, mid-century trailers that line the town. Spiegelworld aims to open some of those accommodations to the public in late 2025. The company said it plans to invest at least $20 million into Nipton.
Gold in the Dust
Once a gold rush town and then merely a neglected, dusty exit off the freeway, Nipton has since been reborn as “the heart and soul” of the circus, Mollison said. Much like the miners looking for gold back in the late 1800s, Mollison and the Spiegelworld crew have found boundless inspiration and treasures of their own out in the vast wilderness of Nipton, preserving the essence of what has made the town an oft-overlooked spot for decades.
“Especially when your life is putting on shows or running restaurants,” he said, “it’s nice to just disappear out to the desert.”
