Here is list of the 50 Billionaires Who Own Over Half of America’s Land
1. Emmerson family: 2,330,000 acres
The Emmerson family runs Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), America’s second-largest lumber producer and are the largest private landowner in California. All in all, the moneyed family owns more than 2.3 million acres of forested land. Most of the land is in the Golden State and Washington, but patriarch Red Emmerson overtook John Malone as America’s largest landowner last October after purchasing Oregon-based Seneca Jones Timer Company. And it seems the family isn’t stopping there. Speaking about the purchase, SPI president George Emmerson said: “We are excited to be joining the Oregon forest products industry, along with the opportunities for further growth in this state.” This family tops the list of Billionaires Who Own America’s Land.
2. John Malone: 2,200,000 acres
The second-largest private landowner in the US, Liberty Media’s John Malone owns a staggering 2.2 million acres of land in America. Malone surpassed fellow media mogul Ted Turner in 2011 to take the number one spot, retaining his title until this year when he slipped one place in the rankings. Today the tycoon, whose net worth has increased by $1.1 billion since the 2019 Land Report and is now estimated at $7.8 billion, controls mammoth tracts of forested land in Maine and boasts ranches in Wyoming, New Mexico, and Colorado. Malone is also a powerful figure in the music industry, having raised his stake in America’s largest broadcasting station company iHeartMedia to 50% in July 2020. Malone is second on the list of Billionaires Who Own America’s Land
3. Reed family: 2,100,000 acres
Dating back five generations, the Reed family’s Green Diamond Resources Company owns 2.1 million acres of land in eight states across the Pacific Northwest and the South, having substantially increased their holdings with the purchase of SDS Lumber Company in November 2021. Like the Irving family and other key landowners in the top 50, the Reeds are all about sustainable forestry and conservation, harvesting less than 2% of their timberland a year. This family 3rd on the list of Billionaires Who Own America’s Land
4. Ted Turner: 2,000,000 acres
CNN founder Ted Turner, who is currently worth $2.3 billion according to Forbes, is America’s fourth-biggest private landowner, having slid from second place since the 2018 Land Report. The media magnate controls two million acres of land across the US, which is largely devoted to eco-friendly bison ranching to supply his Ted’s Montana Grill chain of bison meat restaurants. In fact, Turner has amassed the largest privately-owned bison herd on the planet, with a total of 51,000 animals.
5. Stan Kroenke: 1,627,500 acres
Boasting a net worth of $10.7 billion, sports mogul and property magnate Stan Kroenke has established himself as America’s fifth-biggest landowner in recent years. The billionaire acquired the historic W T Waggoner Ranch in Texas for an estimated $725 million in 2016, swelling his land holdings to 1.38 million acres, before adding an extra 247,500 acres to his holdings last year. Kroenke is married to Walmart heiress Ann Walton Kroenke, who is worth $8.7 billion.
6. Irving family: 1,267,792 acres
The Canadian Irving family controls a whopping 1.267 million acres of land in the US. Its holdings include a giant tract of wooded land in Northern Maine, which it harvests sustainably under the Forest Stewardship Council program, and 1.9 million acres in Canada. In 2018, the Irvings planted their one billionth tree in their continued efforts to be a sustainable business. They have also set aside 1.5 billion acres of land for conservation, focusing on lakes, wetlands, and endangered wildlife. This family is 6th on the list of Billionaires Who Own America’s Land.
7. Peter Buck: 1,236,000 acres
The co-founder of Subway, and a nuclear physicist to boot, Dr Peter Buck was worth $1.7 billion by the time he died in November 2021. In 2019 his landownership hit the one million acres mark and, over the following two years, Buck boosted his empire by an additional 236,000 acres. It’s not clear who now controls the land, but Buck is survived by his two sons William and Christopher who may have taken up the reigns.
8. Brad Kelley: 1,139,984 acres
Brad Kelley, who has a net worth of $2.7 billion, sold his Commonwealth Brands company in 2001 for $1 billion. The reclusive tycoon sold off 10,016 acres of land in 2019, but still owns more than one million acres of ranching land in Texas, Florida, and New Mexico.
9. Singleton family: 1,100,000 acres
The co-founder of conglomerate Teledyne Technologies, Henry Singleton, bought the venerable San Cristobal Ranch near Sante Fe in New Mexico in 1986. Singleton went on to acquire numerous ranches before passing away in 1999. Today, his five children own a total of 1.1 million acres in New Mexico and California, having sold off 10,000 acres since 2019.
10. King Ranch heirs: 911,215 acres
The largest ranch in Texas, King Ranch, is located between Corpus Christi and Brownsville and sprawls over 911,215 acres. The gargantuan operation, which is bigger than the state of Rhode Island, was founded in 1853 by Captain Richard King and Gideon K Lewis. Their heirs still control the ranch, which makes money through ranching, farming, and hunting, as well as its oil and gas operations. King Ranch also deals in citrus fruits and is currently the largest producer of juice oranges in the US. In 2021, the Ranch achieved another milestone when its breeding program produced its first American Quarter Horse Association world champion.
11. Pingree heirs: 830,000 acres
Shipping magnate David Pingree started acquiring land in the state of Maine over 150 years ago, and built up a portfolio of almost a million acres across the Pine Tree State, Texas, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Hampshire. These days, around 830,000 acres in Maine remain, which are controlled by Pingree’s numerous fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-generation descendants through the Seven Island Lands Company. The company mainly produces birch, oak, and maple, which are used for flooring.
12. Briscoe family: 686,000 acres
Practically Texan royalty, the Briscoe family overtook the Wilks brothers last year and currently boasts 686,000 acres, having added 26,000 acres to its holdings since 2019. Several illustrious ancestors played a key part in the history of the Lone Star State, including Andrew Briscoe, a signatory of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and Dolph Briscoe Jr. (pictured), a former governor of the state. Today, their descendants control an ever-expanding portfolio of land in South Texas.
14. Lykes family: 615,000 acres
Dr Howell Lykes shut down his medical surgery in the 1870s and moved to Florida to take over his family’s 500-acre ranch. Today, the doctor’s heirs control 615,000 acres in the Sunshine State and Texas, which are devoted to citrus farming, sugar cane cultivation, and cattle ranching.
15. Ford family: 600,000 acres
The Ford family patriarch Kenneth Ford came from humble beginnings and started out by establishing a small sawmill in Roseburg, Oregon back in 1936. Fast forward more than 85 years and Ford’s descendants own a total of 600,000 acres of forest in Western Oregon and Northern California. However, the family is significantly lower on the Land Report list than it was a couple of years ago, having sold 170,000 acres of land to Shasta Cascade Timberlands.
16. O’Connor family: 587,800 acres
Dubbed ‘The Texas Cattle King’, family patriarch Thomas O’Connor lucked out big time when he was granted 4,428 acres of land in Victoria County back in 1834. By the time he died, his estate was worth $4.5 million, the equivalent of more than $133 million today. Over the years, the Irish immigrant’s descendants have expanded the family’s holdings to a hefty 587,800 acres.
17. Thomas Peterffy: 581,000 acres
A digital investment pioneer, Hungarian refugee Thomas Peterffy has certainly made the US his home. People began to notice Peterffy when he started automating trading floors with computers, but he doesn’t spend all of his time behind a screen. In 2015, Peterffy also made waves in the land sector when he bought Foley Timber & Land, which is a vast swath of forest that covers five counties in Northern Florida. At 581,000 acres, it’s almost as big as Rhode Island.
18. Stimson family: 552,000 acres
As major landowners, the Stimson family goes back even further than the Westervelts at number 20. The Stimson Lumber Company was established before the Civil War, and the clan now controls an ever-expanding portfolio of forested land. This includes seven mills in Oregon and Idaho, as well as considerable fir, pine, and cedar operations in Montana, Oregon, and Idaho.
19. Martin family: 550,000 acres
The Martin family is carrying on the work started by the late Roy O. Martin Jr., who massively expanded the timber firm set up by his father. The company is now headed by Roy O. Martin Jr.’s son Roy O Martin III (pictured). Although the family downsized by 23,000 acres between the 2018 and 2020 Land Report, they increased their holdings by 3,000 acres last year, leaving the Martins with a total of 550,000 acres in America’s Deep South.
20. Westervelt heirs: 518,000 acres
The family-owned Westervelt Company has been in business for 136 years. The firm, which was established in 1884 by Herbert Westervelt as the Prairie States Paper Corporation, is one of America’s leading land resource organizations, with a total of 518,000 acres of forest across five US states.
21. D. R. Horton: 508,410 acres
America’s largest home builder D.R. Horton was founded by Donald Horton (pictured) more than 40 years ago. Over the years, the firm’s founder has been busily acquiring colossal swaths of land in the southwest of the US. In the past few years alone, the construction tycoon has added 131,195 acres to his bulging portfolio. Each year Horton hosts his employees’ young family members at Camp Horton, which is a ranch retreat designed to teach the next generations all about life on a ranch.
22. Simplot family: 443,091 acres
Potato tycoon John Richard Simplot, who died in 2008, founded his eponymous vegetable firm in 1929 and made a fortune supplying frozen French fries to McDonald’s during the 1970s. Simplot’s children and grandchildren own more than a dozen ranches in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, with roughly 30,000 mother cows between them, and around 40 farms mostly in Idaho and Washington. Back in 2017, the J.R Simplot company was awarded the Chief’s Honor Award by the US Forest Service to recognize its conservation work.
23. Fisher family: 440,000 acres
Doris Fisher and her late husband Donald, the couple who founded The Gap clothing stores back in 1969, quietly snapped up hundreds of thousands of acres of land in California from the 1970s onwards. Doris and her children, who are each worth billions, now control a massive sustainable forestry business and have pledged to harvest just 2% of their acreage a year. The family recently came into the spotlight when it was revealed that they, along with a number of other billionaires, had given millions of dollars to a ‘dark money’ group that assembled to try and prevent the election of Barack Obama in 2012.
24. Jeff Bezos: 420,000 acres
The world’s second-richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, doesn’t just own one of the biggest businesses on the planet. Thanks to his ownership of 420,000 acres in West Texas, he’s also one of America’s principal private landowners. The land was acquired by Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company, which launched its first three crewed missions last year, and serves as the firm’s base of operations, launch pad, and testing site.
25. Zane & Tanya Kiehne: 400,000 acres
Zane and Tanya Kienhe were newcomers to the Land Report in 2018. Just four years later, the pair has climbed up the rankings to reach the 25th spot. They’ve recently added 22,980 acres to their estate, bringing their total holdings to 400,000 acres in Southwest Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Two of their biggest purchases are the Hueco Ranch near El Paso and the UU Bar Ranch near Cimarron. Their company, Z&T Holdings, mainly owns mountainous properties filled with wildlife and the Kienhes are committed to improving rangeland conditions across their acreage.
26. Stefan Soloviev: 398,000 acres
In April 2018, Sheldon Solow passed on the reins of his property development firm to his son Stefan, who changed his surname to reflect the Old World spelling. The firm controlled swaths of land in New Mexico, Kansas, and Texas, which Stefan has already rapidly expanded over the last few years. In 2021 alone, he added 47,080 acres to the family holdings in Eastern Colorado.
27. Shannon Kizer: 397,000 acres
A New Mexico native, Kizer owns land in four other states – Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas – as well as running a dairy cattle business. He also grows a variety of crops on his 397,000 acres of land, including corn, hay, peanuts, and wheat.
28. Holding family: 395,030 acres
The late family patriarch Robert Earl Holding (pictured) had interests in transportation, energy and hotels, and developed an enviable portfolio of real estate in Utah and Idaho, as well as an immense cattle ranch, which covers large tracts of land in Southern Montana and Northern Wyoming. Since Holding’s death in 2013, the multimillion-dollar operation has been run by Holding’s widow Carol and their three children.
29. Hughes family: 395,000 acres
Texas native Dan Allen Hughes Sr, who died in 2016, accumulated a billion-dollar fortune in natural gas and oil, and pumped some of the proceeds into the 395,000-acre family ranch in the Lone Star State. The estate is currently owned and operated by his son, Dan Allen Hughes Jr, a noted conservationist who buys portions of land in Texas to protect them.
30. Cullen heirs: 388,000 acres
Hugh Roy Cullen (pictured) started his lucrative oil career in 1932 when he discovered the Tom O’Connor field in Texas, which yielded over a billion barrels of ‘black gold’. Fast-forward almost 100 years and the Texas-native Cullen family is the 30th biggest landowner in America. Nowadays the Cullens mostly deal in coal, despite making their fortune thanks to Hugh Roy’s oil empire.
31. Mike Smith: 339,000 acres
Mike Smith hit the headlines in March 2018 with the high-profile acquisition of the luxury Broseco Ranch, which was listed for sale at $34 million. As well as containing a 2,000-strong cattle herd, the ranch also boasts a 3,200-acre wildlife habitat, lakes filled with bass, and a herd of whitetail deer. In 2021, Smith added 40,757 acres to his estate in the form of the Flat Top Division of the historic Swenson Ranch in West Texas.
32. Robinson & Freed families: 329,000 acres
Newcomers to the Land Report list in 2018, the Robinson and Freed families joined forces in the mid-20th century. They co-owned the Deseret Land and Livestock Ranch, which they sold on before purchasing several other ranches together. The partnership has taken over another 1,000 acres of land since last year, and today their joint venture the Ensign Group boasts 329,000 acres and an impressive 11,000 mother cows.
33. Collins family: 311,380 acres
The Collins Company holds the accolade of being the first private forestry company in America to have all its forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The family sold off 15 acres of land in 2021 but still owns an impressive 311,380 acres spread across California’s Allegheny Mountains, Sierra Nevadas, and Modoc County, as well as Oregon’s Lake and Klamath counties.
34. Barta family: 286,000 acres
Barta Cattle Company in Nebraska was founded by Jim Barta, who sadly passed away at the end of 2019. Instead of flowers at the funeral, the family asked that guests donate to a scholarship fund that would help young people to study agriculture. Barta is also known for having founded Sav-Rx Prescription Services just as the healthcare sector was becoming lucrative. The rest of the family currently looks after 286,000 acres of land in Nebraska, Southeast Oregon, and Nevada.
35. Bass family: 285,000 acres
In 1959, Sid, Ed (pictured on the left), Robert, and Lee Bass each inherited $2.8 million from their uncle, the oil tycoon Sid Richardson. Since then, the brothers have all achieved billionaire status, according to Forbes. The richest among them is Robert, who has accumulated a net worth of $5.1 billion through landholdings, investments, and a private jet start-up Aerion. The bulk of the Bass family’s estate is held by the San Jose Cattle Company on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Joint 36. Llano Partners: 284,000 acres
The landholdings of Austin-based Llano Partners Ltd., headed by G. Hughes Abell, have fluctuated over the last couple of years. The company gained 37,000 acres in 2018 but sold off another 11,000 in 2019. It retains ranches in Texas, New Mexico, and Florida, as well as investments in energy and real estate.
Joint 36. Walker heirs: 284,000 acres
Joining the Land Report rankings for the first time last year were the Walker heirs. Descended from T.B. Walker (pictured), a lumber merchant who made his fortune in Minnesota and California in the late 1800s, the Walkers own 284,000 acres under the name Shasta Forests Timberlands. The land is managed by W.M Beaty & Associates, a company that tries to follow the same sustainability practices that T.B. Walker used over a century ago. These include harvesting trees individually, a method that’s allowed the family’s timber volume to double over the last 50 years.
38. Fasken family: 280,648 acres
This family may have headed south but its fortune certainly hasn’t. The Faskens’ legacy began in 1913 when Canadian David Fasken bought a ranch in Texas, only to discover that it was home to an enormous oil reserve. Today, the clan owns 280,648 acres and is still active in the oil and gas sector, attempting to pioneer a means of fracking that recycles and reuses water throughout the process. The Fasken family also featured on Forbes’ list of America’s Richest Families back in 2015, with a combined fortune of $3 billion.
39. Collier family: 280,000 acres
Barron Gift Collier made his fortune in advertising before becoming Florida’s biggest landowner by his time of death in 1939. A local high school was even named after him. The magnate certainly left a gift for his kids, in the form of sprawling acres of land, which today number 280,000. In fact, the family was wealthy enough that the Colliers ranked as one of America’s 25 richest families back in 2015.
40. Kokernot heirs: 278,000 acres
With their famous O6 ranch, which is a household name in Texas, the seventh generation of the Kokernot family still rely on traditional methods for herding cattle. The Kokernots acquired the ranch in 1872 and followed this up with the purchase of the Leoncita Cattle Company, bringing their total acreage to 278,000.
41. Killam family: 277,000 acres
Another family that made big bucks in the oil industry, the Killams currently own 277,000 acres of land across Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, and New Mexico. O.W. Killam started drilling for oil over a century ago and went on to buy his first 10,000-acre ranch in 1927. Today, his descendants control the family ranch and cattle company. Despite the family’s remaining oil interests, O.W. Killam’s grandson David has been recognized for his conservation work.
Joint 42. Babbitt heirs: 275,000 acres
More than 130 years ago, Dave and Billy Babbitt arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona and quickly acquired numerous ranches. Today, the ranches span an impressive 275,000 acres with herds of cattle grazing on the land, as well as the Hashknife Horse program, which focuses on breeding working Quarter Horses.
Joint 42. Jones family: 275,000 acres
The Jones family was a newcomer to the Land Report last year, thanks to its ownership of the Jones Alta Vista ranch in South Texas. The historic ranch used to be a township and still has its original general store, school, and post office buildings, which have now been renovated into accommodation. Its impressive 275,000 acres are also home to species such as whitetailed deer, wild turkey, and bobwhite quail.
Joint 42. Lee family: 275,000 acres
• Roughly equal to: Twice the size of Chicago
The Lee family owns an estimated 275,000 acres in New Mexico. The Lees are sheep and cattle ranchers who owe some of their wealth to the discovery of uranium and coal on their property in the western part of the state. When Floyd and Frances Lee bought New Mexico’s Fernandez Ranch after World War I, they weren’t expecting it to contain huge, and lucrative, supplies of uranium, nor the stocks of coal they later discovered. By the time the couple passed away, the family had also set up a successful sheep and cattle operation. The discovery and subsequent hard work were clearly fruitful, as the Lee family have since made a name for themselves both in farming and mining.
45. Malone Mitchell 3rd: 273,000 acres
Malone and Amy Mitchell founded the Riata Energy company, now SandRidge Energy, in their guest bedroom in 1985. Two decades later they sold the company for $500 million and went on to found the Riata Corporate Group in 2006. Today, the entrepreneurial couple owns the 273,000-acre Longfellow Ranches in West Texas, a working cattle operation with its own natural gas field.
46. True family: 272,000 acres
The Trues joined America’s top 50 landowners in 2019. Pipelines, trucking, and drilling are the main occupations of this Wyoming-based bunch. Family expanded their landownership by 17,000 acres in 2018. Head of the clan Dave True (pictured) has also served in various roles on the board of trustees at the University of Wyoming. Both he and his wife Melanie studied there
47. Bill Gates: 268,984 acres
In 2021, the Land Report revealed that Microsoft founder Bill Gates was the largest private farmland owner in America. In 2018 he bought 14,500 acres in Washington for $171 million, according to The Guardian. He has since bolstered his estate by over 250,000 acres. Gates now has a total of 268,984 acres of farmland across more than a dozen states. It includes Louisiana, Iowa, Illinois, and California, most of which has been bought by his investment firm
48. Four Sixes Ranch: 266,255 acres
After inheriting Ranch 6666, also known as Four Sixes, from her great-grandfather, Anne Marion kept the family business going as well as founding the Burnett Oil Company in 1980. Her interests in art led her to open the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico and she also served on boards of trustees for various art galleries. Marion sadly passed away in February 2020, leaving 275,000 acres of land, three times the size of Detroit, to husband John L. Marion and the couple’s children. But the ranch hasn’t stayed in the family. When the 2021 Land Report went to press late last year, the ranch was under contract and has reportedly been bought by screenwriter Taylor Sheridan for at least $340 million.
49. Galt family: 262,000 acres
The Galt family has its fingers in many pies, with Errol Galt overseeing the Martinsdale Ranch in central Montana. Son Wylie Galt (pictured) serving as a Republican member of the Montana House of Representatives. Errol’s grandfather Wellington Rankin, who died in 1966, was reportedly Montana’s largest landowner. The family still owns 262,000 acres in the state, which includes the well-known 71 Ranch.
50. D.K. Boyd: 261,937 acres
In 2019, D.K. Boyd jumped 10 places to sit among America’s 50 largest landowners after adding 18,253 acres to his portfolio. Boyd’s Frying Pan Ranch was originally made up of 95 sections in the Texas Panhandle, which was one of the first areas to test out barbed-wire fencing over 130 years ago. A founding officer of the Texas Land & Mineral Owners Association, Boyd also owns Le Ranch in New Mexico. His land assets add up to 261,937 acres in total.
