Half.com, OR

A few days before Christmas in 1999, Dick Crow was sitting in the mayor’s office in Halfway, Ore., wondering how to pay for a new front-end loader, when Mark Hughes, a marketing representative for an Internet company, knocked on his door and offered to cut the city a check for $75,000.

In exchange, Hughes wanted Halfway, a farm and ranching community of 350 near the Idaho border, to rename itself Half.com—after the online shopping bazaar headquartered in Conshohocken, Pa., where everything is sold at half-price.

“He called the day before and said he was coming, and I just forgot about it,” recalls Crow, 65, a retired Forest Service firefighter who was then serving out his third and final term as mayor. “I thought it was a joke.”

But Hughes was serious. Besides the cash, Half.com would donate 20 new computers to the school and would give the city and local businesses unlimited space on the company’s website, in addition to hiring a local computer expert to build and maintain the site.

That night, the city council met and voted unanimously to pursue the offer.

A series of public meetings followed, in which citizens voiced concerns that Halfway was selling itself for money and could become a tourist mecca—but the concern evaporated when it was revealed that the name change would last only a year and that it wouldn’t be official (Half.com, Ore., wouldn’t exist as far as the U.S. Postal Service was concerned). The only evidence of change would be two signs—one at the beginning and one at the end of Main Street—that would say “Welcome to Half.com, the World’s First Dot-com City.”

For Dick Crow, it was a simple decision.

“Basically, there aren’t any jobs,” he says. “We’re getting to be a retirement community. Every year, the number of kids in the school keeps dropping off, and when they graduate, they leave and they don’t come back. We had to do something if we were going to survive.”

Indeed, the mines and timber industry that drew settlers to the Pine Valley in the 1880s are gone now, but Halfway—named for being halfway between the valley’s first two post offices—is still considered a paradise for outdoor enthusiasts. Located between Hells Canyon and the spectacular Wallowa Mountains, it is home to a variety of small businesses ranging from bed & breakfasts to eateries, mail-order houses (Hells Canyon Sweet Hot Mustard, for example), outfitters, retail shops, and a weekly newspaper.

The town always made its way, and pretty much stayed to itself. That is, until Jan. 19, 2000.

When Half.com introduced its geographical namesake to the world the day after it launched its website, news crews converged on Halfway; reporters from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and television crews from as far away as Japan, including NBC’s Today Show. The tourists never materialized, but the computers, the website, the webmaster (the deputy sheriff) and most importantly, the check, did (along, recently, with $5,000 in scholarship funds for high school seniors).

“I think it was a good deal,” says Crow, “because $75,000 is a lot when you’re mayor of a city that generates only $12,000 a year in tax revenues, especially when the snow is piling up on Main Street and you need a new front-end loader.”

“The city’s got a piece of snow-removal equipment it didn’t have, a web page it didn’t have. The school’s got computers it didn’t have. And the fire department has new equipment it didn’t have. If I was still mayor, I’d do it again.”

So would Marvin Burgraff. And he is mayor.

“They might have more money than we do, but I wouldn’t trade places with them any day,” he says. “We’ve got one of the prettiest little cities in the country. Real eye-pleasing, with snow-capped mountains all around.”

“Yep. I’d say we got the better end of the stick.”

Ted Katauskas is a freelance writer from Portland, Ore.

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