Location: Fishers Island Sound, Southold, New York 
Purchased: $2.5 million*
Current Value: $6.09 million*

Dean Kamen, an eccentric genius who invented the SEGWAY, owns a home on North Dumpling Island, which is located off the coast of New York. Kamen’s secret island getaway is two acres, and Kamen purchased it for $2.5 million in the mid-eighties.

The island is now its own country, as Kamen became disgruntled with America when the government wouldn’t let him put a wind turbine on North Dumpling. The honorable island nation, with its sole resident, is technically the most carbon-neutral, eco-friendly country in the world. The self-taught inventor says he hopes his secession from the United States inspires others to become, if not their own rulers, then masters of their own destinies.