Well, Who is the largest Landowner in the US? The top ten landowners in the United States hold more than 13 million acres across the country, accounting for more than 0.5 percent of the country’s total land area. Some of them are children of people who inherited land from their forefathers as early as the 1800s. Others are self-made millionaires who began buying land and have been accumulating acres for years. Approximately 72 percent of land in the United States is privately owned, with a small number of individuals and families controlling a large portion of it. Now let’s jump right in about who the largest landowner in the US is with the top ten families being listed down below.
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10. King Ranch Heirs
Land area: 900,000 acres
The heirs of the King Ranch control over 900,000 acres of land in southern Texas. Captain Richard King purchased the land that became the ranch in 1853, and it has since been passed down through his family. According to Bruce Cheeseman, the company’s historian, “King Ranch is a national historic site”. Today, roughly 60 of King’s heirs hold the more than 900,000-acre ranch, a summation of four noncontiguous ranches and it is administered by a six-member board of directors that includes a direct descendant of King.
In recent years, the ranch has shifted its concentration to producing and selling quarter horses bred specifically for working cattle. King Ranch Inc. also has oil and gas facilities in Texas and other states, as well as agricultural-related businesses. According to Cheeseman, the corporation owns around 18,000 acres of sugar cane fields near Lake Okeechobee in Florida.
The other holdings were not discussed in detail by a business spokeswoman in Florida. However, corporate documents show that the corporation has ten companies in Texas being involved in everything from lumber and printing to property development. According to the ranch’s website tourists are taken on a 12-mile loop from a visitor’s Centre, where a brief video provides historical background and a glance inside the Spanish-style, 25-room ranch residence where King family heirs now entertain private guests.
9. The Singleton family
Land area: 1.1 million acres
The Singleton family has ranches in New Mexico and Santa Fe that were passed down from Henry Singleton, the family patriarch, who died in 1999. Henry Earl Singleton was an electrical engineer, business entrepreneur, and landowner from the United States. Singleton was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to aviation inertial guidance. He was the co-founder and CEO of Teledyne, one of America’s most successful companies, for three decades. Singleton became one of the largest ranchland owners in the United States in his later years.
Henry Singleton began investing in a field far from semiconductors and control systems in his later years. The land had become his new obsession. Singleton began purchasing ranches in New Mexico and, later, California in the mid-1980s. He bought more than twenty ranches in a relatively short period, starting with the 81,000-acre San Cristobal Ranch south of Santa Fe. The majority occurred along US Route 285 from Santa Fe to Roswell, with some occurring in San Miguel and Quay Counties, as well as the 30,000-acre Shepherd Ranch in Guadalupe County. Singleton was more than a dilettante; he was actively involved in ranch operations as well as conservation activities.
Singleton added 28 additional properties over 14 years, making the Singleton Ranches the largest cow-calf farm in New Mexico. A 45,000-acre property in California was Singleton’s most recent purchase. He owned more than 1.5 percent of New Mexico at the time of his death. Singleton Ranches, which own 1.1 million acres in New Mexico plus California being one of the country’s leading cattle and horse-breeding businesses, is now controlled by his children.
8. Brad Kelley
Land area: 1.139 million acres
Brad Maurice Kelley is an American businessman and the country’s eighth landowner, with a net worth of $2.2 billion in 2018. In 1991, he started Commonwealth Brands Tobacco Company, which he sold to Houchens Industries for $1 billion in 2001. Calumet Farm, NC2 Media, and the Center for Innovation and Technology Business Park are among Kelley’s commercial interests as of 2014. Last year, the famous Brad Kelley revealed to The Wall Street Journal that he owns 1.139 million acres, largely in west Texas but also in Florida, Hawaii, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Kelley paid $36 million for the 800-acre Calumet Farm in Kentucky in 2012, where he currently runs his horse-racing business.
“I grew up on a farm and that’s about as good an explanation as there is,” he told the Journal when asked about his land purchases. “Land is something I know. It’s something I have an affinity for. It becomes part of your DNA.”
7. Peter Buck
Land area: 1.236 million acres
Peter Buck is an American scientist, restaurateur, and philanthropist born on December 19, 1930 in the town of South Portland, Maine. He is a co-founder of the Subway fast-food franchise, too. In 1952, he received his bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. He went on to Columbia University to pursue his master’s and doctoral degrees in physics. Peter Buck, a nuclear physicist, gave his friend’s son, Fred DeLuca, $1,000 to start a sub shop in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1965.
In 1966, the two cofounded Doctor’s Associates Inc., the franchisor of Subway restaurants, a year later. Subway, which has restaurants in over 100 countries, made $959 million in revenue in 2019. Buck is the founder and CEO of Tall Timbers Trust, one of Maine’s major timberland owners. Buck owns roughly 1.2 million acres in total, most of which is in Maine. He has donated $216 million to his PCLB Foundation, which helps groups dealing with family issues, in the last five years.
6. Irving family
Land area: 1.247 million acres
In the United States, the Irving family is the sixth-largest private landowner. The Irvings hold around 2 million acres in Canada. They also own 1.2 million acres in Maine. The younger Irvings are fighting for control of a commercial empire that was previously run by just one man, K.C. Irving. Each generation of Irvings has put its imprint on the family business, and the newest crop is almost ready to join in.
James Irving founded the Irving Empire in 1881 when he purchased a small sawmill. The local economy was eventually dominated by the sons of Scottish immigrants. The majority of the other grandchildren are too young to become involved in the family business at the moment. On the other hand, the Irving dynasty almost guarantees room for every family member to join, with a possible feud on the horizon as the empire is further divided.
5. Stan Kroenke
Land area: 1.380 million acres
Stanley Kroenke is a multibillionaire businessman from the United States. He owns Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which owns English football clubs Arsenal F.C. and Arsenal W.F.C. Stan Kroenke, owns 1.380 million acres of land in the US, including a 124,000-acre ranch in Montana and additional acreage in Wyoming. Kroenke is married to Ann Walton Kroenke in 1974, a Wal-Mart wealth heiress. In 1983, he formed the Kroenke Group, a real estate development company that has constructed shopping malls and apartment buildings. Many of his plazas are located near Wal-Mart stores.
He also serves as the chairman of THF Realty, an independent real estate development firm specializing in suburban development. In 1991, he created this company in St. Louis, Missouri. Forbes estimated Kroenke’s net worth to be $10 billion in 2020 with more than 100 projects totaling 20 million square feet, mostly in retail shopping complexes.
4. Reed family
Land area: 1.7 million acres
The Reed family is a land-owning business family from the United States. Simpson Investment Company, founded in 1890, and its spin-off Green Diamond Resource are currently controlled by the family. The family owns 1.7 million acres in California, Washington, and Oregon.
In 1897, Sol Simpson hired Reed, a failing logger, to manage the Simpson Logging Company, Simpson’s family-owned store in Shelton, Washington. In 1901, Reed married Simpson’s daughter, Irene. Reed took over Simpson Logging after Simpson died in 1906. At the time, the enterprise employed over 300 workers who worked in five different camps. Reed gained complete control of the company by 1914 and had converted it into a forest-products corporation. The Reed Mill, the company’s first sawmilling, opened in 1925, and it joined the hemlock lumber-making sector. The Reed family bought 600,000 acres of Oregon forest in 2014, making them the fourth largest landowner in the United States. The family’s net worth was estimated to be $1.7 billion in 2015.
3. Ted Turner
Land area: 2 million acres
Robert Turner, an American entrepreneur, television producer, media mogul, and philanthropist, was born on November 19, in 1938. He is best known for founding the Cable News Network (CNN), the first 24-hour cable news channel, as a businessman. In addition, he developed WTBS, which was the first cable television superstation and ultimately became TBS. Turner began working for his father’s billboard company, Turner Advertising when he was 12 years old. After his father died in 1963, he assumed leadership of the company and renamed it Turner Broadcasting.
In 1996, he sold Turner to Time Warner for $7.3 billion in stock, but his income plummeted after Time Warner bought AOL in 2001. Turner owns almost 2 million acres and is the third-largest individual landowner in the United States. In Argentina, he also owns 51,000 bison and ranches. Turner is the head of the Turner Foundation Inc., which is dedicated to protecting and restoring America’s natural habitats and is a Giving Pledge signee.
2. Emmerson family
Land area: 2.078 million acres
Archie Aldis “Red” Emmerson is a millionaire businessman in the United States and the creator of Sierra Pacific Industries, a timber products corporation with 2.078 million acres of property in northern California and western Washington. In 1929, he was born in Grand Ronde, Oregon. Emmerson moved to Arcata, California, in 1948 at the age of 19 and began working in mills, learning as much as he could about every job in the facility.
Emmerson and his father created a partnership in 1949 and entered the lumber business, eventually establishing industrial facilities in the northwest. Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), today the second-largest lumber manufacturer in the United States, expanded under Emmerson’s leadership. In the United States, the Emmerson family is the second-largest private landowner. Red’s sons, George and Mark, now serve as president and chairman of the company, respectively, though Red remains in the office virtually every day.
1. John Malone
Land area: 2.2 million acres
John Malone is one of the most powerful media owners in the world as the chairman and main shareholder of Liberty Media. He also owns 28 percent of Discover Communications, which just paid $14.6 billion for News Network, and 25 percent of Liberty Global, the world’s largest international cable business with just under 30 million members. He also owns 8% of the Atlanta Braves, a professional baseball franchise.
Malone was born on March 7, 1941, in Milford, Connecticut, a 2,500-person suburb north of New York City at the time. Malone enrolled in New York University’s electrical engineering program at Bell Labs, an institute renowned for developing several major telecom innovations, including the laser beam and radio transmission, after receiving an education at the prestigious Hopkins School, Yale University, and John Hopkins University. He received his first taste of the telecoms business during these years.
He owns 2.2 million acres of US cropland, ranch land, and woodland each of which is roughly three times the size of Rhode Island and in 2011, he became the largest landlord in the US, surpassing his old friend Ted Turner, after purchasing 1.2 million acres in Maine to store his yacht collection. Malone also owns the 32,669-square-foot Humewood Castle in Wicklow, Ireland, as well as several hotels in Dublin.
Final takeaway
I hope you enjoy the topic of America’s top ten landlords. As it is rightly said by Malone “Productive land is one of the very few permanent values throughout history,”
Related: The Top 10 Richest Real Estate Owners in the World.
