For sale: 230-year-old fixer-upper straddling US-Canada border

Trevor Hughes , Trevor Hughes | Burlington Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Cross-border fixer-upper for sale This historic home straddling the Vermont-Canada border lets you live in two countries simultaneously.

DERBY LINE - For sale: a unique opportunity to live in two nations simultaneously — just don't exit the wrong door.

An unusual house on the market in this remote corner of Vermont straddles the U.S.-Canada border. Monitored 24/7 by armed border guards from both countries, the 230-year-old building is a bit of no-man's-land for anyone inside.

If you enter from the American side and try to exit via the Canadian end of the house, you will come face to face with an unwelcome surprise: an angry border agent.

“You step out that door, you’d probably be in trouble,” said Brian DuMoulin, 71, whose aunt owned the house before he did. “If you come in from the American door, you have to leave from the American door. And that’s the Canadian door."

Built deliberately straddling the border in 1787 as a general store serving both countries, the building today has been subdivided into five apartments, three on the American side and two in Canada. A line laid across the floor of an upstairs bedroom shows where the actual border runs, and DuMoulin pays property taxes to both counties. He's selling the currently vacant house for $109,000, acknowledging that it needs some renovations but could also be the perfect place for a couple whose love knows no borders.

Border agents allow Canadians to enter from the Canadian side, and Americans to enter from the U.S. side, effectively allowing them to live in the other country without need for a visa. It’s unclear how carefully the border control agents in the adjacent checkpoints monitor the comings-and-goings of residents.

DuMoulin, who is selling the house so he can focus on other jobs, said American agents some years ago had him wire shut the home’s back gate, making it harder for someone to sneak from one country to another.

“It’s probably the most confusing part of our border,” he said. “They don’t have control over a piece of property right in front of them.”

Derby Line and the adjoining town of Stanstead, Canada, have long been a poster child for the challenges of maintaining the northern border, with streets blocked by decorative metal grates in some places and flowerpots in others. In some areas, the border runs through the middle of farmers’ fields or alongside dirt roads. Most of it lacks a fence or even signs warning people they’re about to cross from one country into another, although even coming close draws a quick response from patrolling U.S. agents in SUVs and Jeeps.

Border guards on the Canadian side say sensors embedded in the ground and satellites overhead help monitor the area, and agents take illegal crossings seriously. In 2010, a local man was detained for walking across the road to buy a pizza. More recently, a Russian man who became a naturalized Canadian was arrested and indicted on charges he tried to help a Russian and a Uzbek man illegally enter the U.S. after the two walked crossed the border by sneaking through a field east of Derby Line.

Federal court filings acknowledge the area is a “well-known smuggling corridor with previous alien smuggling events.”

Troy Rabideau, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection assistant port director for the area, said the agents know who live there, but keeping track can be a challenge.

"It's always a fine line," Rabideau said. "We do the best we can to keep an eye on it. We do what we have to do, security first, but we also want the support of the locals."

In the case brought against the Russian-Canadian man arrested May 31, federal officials said remote sensors and cameras detected the two men walking through the field at about 2 a.m. beneath a crescent moon.

Before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, things were far more casual.

DuMoulin remembers hot-wiring his dad’s car decades ago so he could drive across the border to meet his now-wife, Joan, 70, who grew up on the American side.

“I’d drive through customs, wires hanging down, 14 years old, no driver’s license. And they’d laugh,” DuMoulin said. “That’s how slack it was. You never gave it a second thought. Now, it’s a big deal.”

The house is one of several structures in the area built atop the approximately 5,000-mile-long border, including the nearby Haskell Free Library and Opera House, whose founders shared U.S.-Canadian heritage and wanted the facility open to people from both countries.

The Haskell entrance is on the U.S. side, but American border officials permit Canadians to walk across the border, without first visiting a checkpoint, if they stay on the sidewalk. American agents in marked Border Patrol SUVs keep a close eye on the area but otherwise don’t interfere as Canadians weave through the flowerpots marking the border and step inside.

Library visitors can check out books in both English and French, and the local theater company draws from both countries. Wandering around town, it’s clear visitors from both sides find the unusual arrangement fascinating. Americans snap photos across the street into Canada, and Canadians similarly pose in front of the Canusa St. sign a few feet away.

DuMoulin grew up hearing stories about people bringing in goods from one country and selling them across the counter to the other, including salt and undyed margarine. His aunt drove an overpowered American car with no back seats and a trunk she refused to open for customs agents.

Was she bootlegging booze across the border during Prohibition? “I was a 7-year-old. They wouldn’t have told me if they did,” DuMoulin said with a laugh.

Contributing: The Associated Press