Greg Carr, who grew up in Idaho and then founded the Internet company Prodigy, is leading an effort to transform the former Aryan Nations' site into a place of progress and stability. Carr, whose Cambridge, Mass.-based Carr Foundation bought the property and its nine buildings in March for $250,000, would like to incorporate the retreat, or children's camp devoted to diversity, with the group's public human-rights center in nearby Coeur d'Alene.

The property's former owner, Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler, lost the property in bankruptcy proceedings. Butler, now 83, first moved to northern Idaho in 1973 and assembled one of the nation's largest contingents of skinheads and uniformed racists and anti-Semites. Butler is said to be in ill health yet still lives in the area. His following has reportedly dwindled to about a dozen members.