Moutain House, California was a poor attempt at creating a town in the cow pastures in the San Joaquin Valley next to Tracy. In 2003, a developer began to build a couple of thousand homes in the middle of nowhere. In late 2006, only a few hundred homes were built and sold and new homes were not selling anymore. In 2008, the developer declared bankruptcy and abandoned Mountain House. For teens there is no high school. For any and all Mountain House residents, there are no stores, schools, medical offices, or anything. There is nowhere for a teen to hang out. Nearby towns of Stockton or Tracy are low income/high crime and not a good place to hang out. My friends and I usually go into the beautiful towns of the Bay Area to hang out. We like the Hacienda Crossings shopping center/cineplex in Dublin and although a bit more of a drive, we also go to the really nice, upscale Streets of Brentwood with a digital Rave cinexplex. To make matters worse, the few hundred homes that were bought in Moutain House were bought with Option ARM loans by people without good incomes so most houses are now in some phase of foreclosure. In a couple of years, Mountain House will probably be an abandoned ghost town.

When you eat dirt for the first time and leave your family to build a shack in the woods