95 – Butler Heirs – 97,389 acres

The Butler family’s Fort Union Ranch is a working cow-calf and yearling operation that spans more than 97,000 acres and surrounds the Fort Union National Monument in New Mexico. The historic monument, which sits on 720 acres donated by the Butlers, receives 13,000 to 14,000 visitors per year.

88 – Yates Family – 100,000 acres

The secretive family whose fortune is estimated at $300 million by The New York Times is best known for varied oil-and-gas interests based out of Artesia, New Mexico. The Yateses reportedly own approximately 100,000 acres of ranchland in several New Mexico counties.

5 – Singleton Family – 1 million-plus acres

Henry Singleton was a man of science. Educated at MIT, he was especially interested in technology. And in 1960, he and a partner founded a company called Teledyne, a business dedicated to the young field of digital technology. The company made millions, and Singleton became a well-known business executive. Late in his life, however, he began investing in a field far removed from the world of semiconductors and microchips. His new passion: land. In the mid-1980s, Singleton started buying ranches in California and New Mexico, beginning with the historic San Cristobal Ranch outside Santa Fe. Within a 14-year period, he purchased 28 other ranches, which made Singleton Ranches the largest cowcalf operation in the Land of  Enchantment. The ranch that started it all, the culture-rich San Cristobal, was once home to Indian pueblos, but it’s now the base of Singleton Ranches’ horse division. This division of the ranch conglomerate has facilities for breeding and training and holds horse clinics every year that are open to the public. Singleton died in 1999, but not before amassing more than a million acres of ranchland that remain in the Singleton family, putting the Singletons neck and neck with Ted Turner for the title of largest landowner in New Mexico.

1. Ted Turner – 2 million acres

Why on earth would one man own 20 properties in 10 states, a swath of America so large that it not only dwarfs Rhode Island, but also exceeds both Rhode Island and Delaware combined? The answer is astonishingly simple. Because he’s Ted Turner.

The man is incapable of thinking small. That’s how he made his fortune, first by buying a failing UHF station and transforming it into WTBS. Then he launched CNN. Then he acquired the MGM movie library. Then he rolled out Turner Classic Movies. With Turner, one idea begets another, which is how he became the country’s leading land baron.

The brainstorm behind his far-flung empire was a single bison he bought in 1976. Three decades later, he owns 40,000, the largest private herd in the country. Bison steaks and bison burgers from Turner Ranches are shipped to upscale grocers coast to coast and served at his chain of restaurants, Ted’s Montana Grill.

Along the way, he purchased 14 ranches in 7 western states: 4 in Montana, 4 in Nebraska, and 3 others in South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma. In New Mexico alone, he owns more than 1 million acres.

“I acquired more land because I required more land. I wanted it,” Turner said in a 2004 interview. “I never like to buy anything except land. It’s the only thing that lasts.”

The Turner portfolio also includes personal homes in the Atlanta area and in Big Sur, as well as plantations in South Carolina and Florida, where his beloved Avalon lies. This treasured retreat encompasses more than 25,000 acres south of Tallahassee, and with a conservationist’s touch, Turner is reintroducing longleaf pine on the property. The vast majority of his holdings, however, can be found on the Great Plains and in the Rocky Mountain West, where he stocks his bison.

Turner’s ultimate plan? According to published reports, after his death the properties will go into a trust, which his five children will manage until the last one passes away. At that point, the trust will revert to the Turner Foundation, an Atlanta-based charitable organization that Turner founded in 1990 to preserve the environment.

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