In December of 2021, Mark Cuban, billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, bought a small Texas town by the name of Mustang, Texas. Mustang is 77 acres of overgrown land with a population of zero.

Incorporated in 1973, it had just two business, which are now abandoned buildings; a strip club and an adult video store. The town used to have a mobile home park with 21 residents. But in 2008, a patron of the strip club was killed after an altercation with a DJ and two employees. The club closed soon after and the residents moved.


This project was photographed for The New York Times.

Ken Coots, 81, lived in Mustang in the 1990s. “There were so few of us that we knew each other well,” Coots said, “a lot of people came down here to drink and have a good time. It was rowdy.”

Cuban bought the small plot of land as a favor for Marty Price, an owner of Mustang and a long-time friend who was diagnosed with an aggressive case of leukemia. Price didn’t want to leave his wife, Nancy, 71, and his three adult children with the burden of owning a town.

Price reached out to Cuban and then realtor Laura Richards, finalized the sale three months after Price’s death.

Mustang is a small town with nothing but potential. It’s an hour south of Dallas and three hours north of Houston on I-45. It’ll be interesting to see what Cuban decides to do with the small plot of land, if anything.

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