50. Hadley family: 260,000 acres including the huge Diamond A Ranch, which takes up a good part of New Mexico’s southwestern tip. Family members are heirs to the Anheuser-Busch beer empire,
49. Lyda family: 260,035 acres, including La Escalera ranch in far West Texas. Family members are mostly cattle ranchers.
48. Galt family: 262,000 acres in Montana, including the Martinsdale Ranch. Family members are mostly cattle ranchers. Errol Galt is the former Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Game commissioner.
47. Anne Marion: 275,000 acres in Texas, including the famous 6666, or “Four Sixes” cattle ranch in the Southern Panhandle, which is close to 150 years old.
46. Lee family: 275,000 acres in New Mexico. Family members are mostly sheep and cattle ranchers who owe some of their wealth to the discovery of uranium and coal on their property.
45. Babbitt heirs: 275,000 acres in Arizona. Family members are long-time cattle ranchers.
44. Killam family: 277,000 acres, mostly ranches in Texas and Oregon and oil operations in Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas.
43. Kokernot heirs: 278,000 acres in Texas. The Kokernot family’s 06 Ranch brand has been registered in the state since 1837. Both the Family’s 06 Ranch and Leoncita Cattle Company Ranch are in West Texas.
42. Fasken family: 279,128 acres in Texas. David Fasken, a Canadian, bought a ranch in West Texas in 1913 and the discovery of oil on the property led to the ceation of the Fasken Oil & Ranch, a major oil drilling.
41. Collier family: 280,000 acres, primarily in Collier County, Florida. Baron Collier, an advertising executive who developed land and infrastructure in southern Florida, had been largest landholder in the state at the time of his death.
40. Bass family: 285,000 acres in Texas. Family members used the land to enrich themselves from oil and cattle ranching.
39. Barta family: 286,000 acres in Nebraska. The Barta family, which owes its wealth to its prescription services company, Sav-Rx, now owns one of the largest cattle ranching operations in the state.
38. Llano Partners: 295,000 acres in New Mexico, Texas and Florida. Family members are ranch operators.
37. Mike Smith: 295,980 acres in Texas. His properties include the 11,830 Broseco Ranch, which contains two lakes that are 100 acres in size.
36. Robinson & Freed families: 300,000 acres in Utah. Member of both families operate six cattle ranches.
35. Shannon Kizer: 302,000 acres in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Kizer has farming and ranching operations that produce peanuts, corn, wheat, dairy, and cattle.
34. Collins family: 311,395 acres in Northern California and western Pennsylvania. Family members run a long-time lumber business.
33. Stefan Soloviev: 325,077 acres in New Mexico, Kansas and Texas. Soloviev uses the land to grow crops like wheat, corn, and sorghum.
32. Malone Mitchell 3rd: 336,000 acres in Texas. Malone Mitchell runs Longfellow Ranches, a 500 square mile hunting preserve.
31. Zane & Tanya Kiehne: 345,000 acres in New Mexico and Texas. The couple are ranch operators.
30. Hughes family: 390,000 acres in Texas. The family is in the oil business.
29. Holding family: 395,030 acres in Montana. Family members come from the Sinclair Oil empire.
28. Jeff Bezos: 420,000 acres in Texas. Bezos is cofounder of Amazon.
27. Philip Anschutz: 434,500 acres in Wyoming and Colorado. Plans for his land in Wyoming include building billed as one of the largest in the world.
26. Fisher family: 440,000 acres in California. The property is manly timberland. Owners Donald and Doris Fisher co-founded the clothing brand Gap.
25. Simplot family: 443,091 acres in Idaho. Family members are farmers and descendants of Jack Simplot, who first supplied McDonald’s with french fries.
24. McDonald family: 474,000 acres in Alabama, Florida, and Oklahoma – but the majority of the family’s land holdings are in Maine. They use their land for timber, sand and gravel, and oil extraction
23. D.R. Horton: 503,000 acres in New Mexico and Texas, where he hosts a children’s summer camp. He operates a ranch and children’s summer camp.
22. Westervelt heirs: 518,000 acres in Alabama, Mississippi, and Virginia. Family members run renewable energy, lumber and wildlife services.
21. Holland Ware: 534,900 acres in Florida and Georgia. Most of Ware’s holdings are controlled by the Holland M. Ware Charitable Foundation, which helps several causes, including animal welfare.
20. Stimson family: 552,000 acres in Montana and Oregon. The family is in the lumber business.
19. Martin family: 570,000 acres in Louisiana. Family members have run a long-time lumber business.
18. Ford family: 580,000 acres in Oregon. Family members have had a long-time timber business.
17. Thomas Peterffy: 581,000 acres in Florida. Peterffy, a refugee from Hungary, made his fortunes as an investor.
16. O’Connor heirs: 587,800 acres in Texas. Family members have oil interests.
15. Hamer family: 600,000 acres in West Virginia. The family harvests hardwood timber from the land.
14. Lykes heirs: 615,000 acres in Texas. The family raises cattle and grows citrus.
13. Briscoe heirs: 640,000 acres in Texas. The combined landholdings belonged to former Texas governor, the late Dolph Briscoe Jr.
12. Wilks Brothers: 702,367 acres in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas. Brothers Farris and Dan Wilks started off with Frac Tech, a natural gas extraction company in 2002, and sold it for $3.5 billion in 2011. Since then, they have been acquiring land.
11. Pingree heirs: 830,000 acres in Maine. Family members maintain a long-time lumber company.
10. King Ranch heirs: 911,215 acres in Texas. The property is the largest ranch in the state, by Captain Richard King in 1853 and subsequently passed down through generations.
9. Peter Buck: 925,000 acres in Maine.
8. Singleton family: 1.1 million acres in New Mexico and California. Family members operate ranches.
7. Brad Kelley: 1.2 million acres in Kentucky. Kelley’s investment group owns and runs the 762-acre Calumet Farm, which produces Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown winners.
6. Irving family: 1.2 million acres in Maine. Family members run lumber, newspapers, and petrochemicals businesses.
5. Stan Kroenke: 1.4 million acres in Montana and Wyoming. The real estate mogul is also owner of the Los Angeles Rams and married to Ann Walkton Kroenke, an heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune.
4. Reed family: 1.7 million acres Washington, Oregon, and California. Family members own a long-time logging firm, Green Diamond Resource Co.
3. Emmerson family: 2.0 million acres in California and Washington. Family members run Sierra Pacific Industries, a log business that relies on lumber from forest fires and sells it to lumber retailers.
2. Ted Turner: 2.0 million acres in New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Georgia. Turner’s land is used by more than 50,000 head of buffalo for grazing – the largest private herd of bison in the world.
1. John Malone: 2.2 million acres in Maine, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. Malone, the largest private landowner in the United States and who made his fortune in the telecom business, runs profitable cattle ranches.