Sitting deep in West Texas, an hour's drive northwest of Marfa — an arts-mecca-turned-tourist destination in the high desert of the Lone Star State — is what's left of a ghost town that recently hit the market.

The owners of Lobo, Texas, have listed the 10-acre town for $100,000 with a bid deadline of June 24. They are holding an open house for potential buyers over Memorial Day weekend. Prospects visiting Lobo must sign a liability waiver noting they know the dangers of the ghost town, including open septic holes, rattlesnakes and Africanized bees and other hazards, co-owner Alexander Bardorff told CoStar News.

A group of friends from Germany, including Bardorff, bought the town in 2001 for an undisclosed sum in a move reminiscent of the purchase of the fictional town in the comedic television show "Schitt's Creek" but with a little more strategy behind the deal. Lobo's owners wanted to create a bohemian-style retreat where they could take a respite from the world, hosting music and film festivals and invite artists throughout the globe to the Texas desert.

The friends are selling the town because they said they are now too old to maintain the aging buildings and 10 acres comprising Lobo.

"We're hoping to find a buyer with lots of energy, endurance, motivation and an interesting vision for Lobo's future," said Bardorff, who is in his 70s. "We will consider all offers, taking into account not only the sales price but also, the buyer's vision."

Like other Texas towns, Lobo got its start because it became known as a watering hole, sitting on a patch of dirt atop Van Horn Wells, the only water source in a 100-mile radius. The discovery, made in the 1850s, put this part of West Texas on the map as a stop on the San Antonio-San Diego mail route, as well as being a place in the 1880s for steam locomotives to refill their water tanks on their journey west.

At the turn of the century, the town got its name of Lobo, which is Spanish for wolf, by its first settlers because of the wolf packs roaming the area. In 1907, the post office opened and, in the decades to come, a general store, hotel and gas station followed to support the small community that always remained fewer than 100 residents. In the 1980s, the aquifer was pumped dry and by the early 1990s, Lobo was also emptied of its few residents, becoming a ghost town.

With few ghost towns on the U.S. market — especially those in the Lone Star State, which is known for its American West history — this could be a rare opportunity for a national or international investor, said Bernie Uechtritz, founder of Dallas-based Icon Global Group.

Uechtriz, who is not involved in Lobo's listing, has sold marquee properties such as Waggoner Ranch, the largest Texas ranch within one fence in the United States, to Stan Kroenke, a billionaire and owner of the L.A. Rams.

"There's this fascination with Americana and the great West and the cowboy legacy that has some European and global investors wanting to invest not in Dallas or Austin, but invest where it's really rugged, beautiful and hard to live," Uechtritz told CoStar News from France, where he was meeting with investors to discuss real estate, including ranches in Texas. "They are attracted to the pioneering spirit and the romance of the Wild West."

Those real estate investors seeking these one-of-a-kind properties tend to have deep pockets and aren't impacted by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates or other macroeconomic conditions that impact public companies and leveraged investors.

Uechtritz, who is marketing a roughly 80,000-acre Turkey Track Ranch in the Texas Panhandle for $200 million, said he hasn't noticed the macroeconomic conditions impacting bids. It's all about finding the right steward for the historic property, he said, which seems to be what Lobo's owners want for its future — even though Lobo dwarfs in comparison.

"There's a lot of legacy in these properties," Uechtritz added. "You can't go to any other state in the country — or the world — and buy part of the American West like you can in Texas."

Those wide open spaces also put people in proximity to a wide variety of issues not typically seen in most big cities in Texas.

Lobo is located about 15 miles east of the Rio Grande, the river that separates Texas and Mexico. It is closer to the border than it is to a Walmart. Being close to the border means ranchers must sometimes contend with migrants attempting to cross illegally, cutting fences and removing other obstacles along the way, said Sam Middleton, a longtime land broker from Lubbock, Texas.

And there can be other dangers, he said.

"I'm reluctant to take any [ranch] listing down there because there's a lot of drug traffic coming across the border and it's a huge issue right now," Middleton told CoStar News.

For example, Middleton had a ranch listing near the border a few years ago, working alongside a longtime Texas broker, about 12 miles from the Rio Grande river. They were working with a photographer in the pre-dawn hours on the property, preparing to get some awe-inspiring photos of the sun coming up on the horizon. As they opened the ranch gate to walk the property and make sure the photographer had his bearings, they were swarmed by U.S. border control cars and agents seemingly coming out of nowhere, surrounding them.

"With the photography equipment and everything we had, we were able to convince them who we were, but they told us they were tracking three drug runners on foot with backpacks carrying AK-47s" who were on the ranch, Middleton said.

It's hard to imagine such activity in empty Lobo these days. The ghost town's properties include a former motel, former grocery store and post office, former gas station and restaurant, a pool, and other houses and structures — some with electricity and some without.

The town does have a new well pump, pipes and control system and two 400-gallon water tanks and a pump, according to the listing.

It is surrounded by well-known destinations and names for tourism and in the business world. For example, Lobo is 40 miles southeast of the site where Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos launches rockets for his private commercial space flight company Blue Origin.

And, Lobo is less than an hour northwest of Marfa, a small desert town with about 2,000 residents. Marfa was recently named "America's Coolest Art Town" by Vogue and has attracted visitors from throughout the globe including celebrities such as Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Matthew McConaughey.

Lobo could be positioned to benefit from the popularity of Marfa, which has experienced a rise in real estate prices, making some locals wonder if they can still afford to live in the isolated West Texas town. Marfa has some funky conversion real estate projects with a high caliber of food and service expected in a large U.S. city rather than the desert plains of Texas, said Uechtritz, who recently visited Marfa.

"If Marfa can do what it's done, Lobo can create its own identity," Uechtritz said.

Small residential homes in Marfa are now being valued for upward of $500,000 to $700,000, Uechtritz said. That appreciation has also spread to the sprawling desert land in West Texas, he said, with prices having risen in some places from $1,500 an acre to more than $20,000 an acre for the right tract.

Middleton, the land broker from Lubbock, said he's seen picturesque land near the Davis Mountains State Park in West Texas go for between $1,500 and $3,500 an acre. Lobo is about an hour drive west of the mountains, which Middleton considers to be more scenic than "all the touristy-type stuff" in Marfa.

Still, Middleton said pricing can be difficult to determine in this rugged but scenic part of Texas because there's "not enough sales to hang your hat on."