Who Owns America

72% of America’s land being privately owned, a staggeringly large chunk of that is controlled by a small number of people. 

The Top Ten

10. King Ranch heirs: 911,215 acres

The largest ranch in Texas, King Ranch, which is located between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, sprawls over 911,215 acres. The gargantuan operation was founded in 1853 by Captain Richard King and Gideon K Lewis. Their heirs still control the ranch, which comprises ranching, farming and hunting, as well as gas and oil operations.

9. Peter Buck: 925,000 acres

The co-founder of Subway, Peter Buck is worth $1.7 billion according to Forbes, and has vast investments in Maine timberland totaling 925,000 acres – up by an impressive 125,000 acres compared to last year. 

8. 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, who passed away in 1999, went on to acquire numerous ranches. Today, his five children own a total of 1.1 million acres in New Mexico and California.

7. Brad Kelley: 1,150,000 acres

Brad Kelley, who has a net worth of $2.4 billion, made his money from tobacco, selling his Commonwealth Brands company in 2001 for $1 billion. The reclusive cigarette tycoon, who ironically has never smoked, owns one million acres of ranching land in Texas, Florida and New Mexico.

6. Irving family: 1,247,880 acres

The only non-American landowners in the top 30, the Canadian Irving family control a whopping 1.247 million acres of land in the US. The family looks after a giant tract of wooded land in Northern Maine, which it harvests sustainably under the Forest Stewardship Council programme, not to mention 1.9 million acres in Canada. 

5. Stan Kroenke: 1,380,000 acres

Boasting a net worth of $8.8 billion, sports mogul and property magnate Stan Kroenke has established himself as America's fourth-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.

4. Reed family: 1,729,232 acres

Dating back to 1890, the Reed family's Green Diamond Resources Company owns just shy of 1.73 million acres of land in eight states across the Pacific Northwest and the South. Like the Irving family and other key landowners in the top 50, the Reeds are all about sustainable forestry and conservation, and harvest less than 2% of their timberland a year. 

3. Emmerson family: 1,956,100 acres

The Emmerson family runs Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), America's second-largest lumber producer and the largest private landowner in California. All in all, the moneyed family own 1.956 million acres of forested land in the Golden State and Washington, as well as 14 sawmills scattered over the two states.

2. Ted Turner: 2,000,000 acres

CNN founder Ted Turner, who Forbes says is currently worth $2.2 billion, is America's second-biggest private landowner. The media mogul 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.

1. John Malone: 2,200,000 acres

The 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, and today the tycoon, who is worth $7.3 billion, controls mammoth tracts of forested land in Maine, as well as ranches in Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado.