Who Is The Largest Landowner In The USA?

from sea to shining sea there are over 2.2 billion acres of land across America filled with amber waves of grain purple mountains and wide-open blue skies America possesses some of the most unique and diverse groups of geographies and climates found in the world with so much land and diversity within our borders have you ever wondered who owns the most land within America stick around and find out [Music] the US federal government has been the largest public landowner throughout America's history owning as much as one point nine three billion acres of land at the height of the Western expansion according to the Congressional Research Service is federal land ownership report from 2020 it is still the nation's largest landowner today owning six hundred and forty million acres that's about twenty eight percent of all land across the United States but who is the largest landowner in America and how much does he or she own well I'll get to that in a minute first I think a little history lesson is important to understand and answer two important questions one why did the federal government give away most of the land at once owned and to wise land ownership such an important part of American society during the mid to late 1800s Congress enacted many laws to encourage and accelerate the settlement of the west by disposing federal lands two key examples include the Homestead Act of 1862 and the desert lands entry Act of 1877 the hopes that Act in 1862 for example granted adult heads of families freed slaves and immigrants a hundred and sixty acres of public land essentially for free if they lived on that land for five consecutive years and abided by a few other conditions between 1781 and today approximately 1.2 billion acres of public land was transferred out of federal ownership the total includes transfers of 116 million acres to individuals and businesses 328 million acres to States and 143 million acres in Alaska under state and native selection laws however it's worth noting 97 percent of transfers to private individuals occurred before 1940 homestead entries for example peaked ten at eighteen point three million acres but dropped below 200,000 acres annually after 1935 until being fully eliminated in 1986 you might be asking why was the federal government so interested in encouraging settlements in the West well just before the start of the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln believed and said in a speech that the government's purpose was to elevate the condition of men to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life he followed that idea with the passage of the Homestead Act later that year during another speech he made in Ohio in February 1861 Lincoln said the Homestead Act was worthy of consideration and that the wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefiting his condition you see Lincoln knew that land ownership was a foundational asset in elevating the economic prosperity of men land is the basis to which all goods and services originate from it's a commodity based asset that you can't make any more of and a good hedge against the devaluation of currency land has made families wealthy and politically influential since the dawn of time during America's early years only land owners had the right to vote and decide who covered the country that type of economic power had a strong influence on the decisions our government would make and dictated laws that would further enrich the wealthy as it evolved over its 243 year history these days when there's uncertainty in the financial markets or in Washington DC more and more investors look at land as a safe place to invest their money it's no wonder all the people who are mostly late in the US rank among the wealthiest Americans so who do you think is the largest private landowner in America some might think is Donald Trump but he isn't he doesn't even crack the top 100 [Music] when I was growing up Ted Turner was the largest landowner in America the media mogul behind the creation of CNN the first 24-hour cable news channel and the TBS cable channel Ted Turner owns over two million acres and uses some of his lands to raise bison e amassing the largest herd in the world which he just happens to use for his Ted Montana grill a Cheney might have eaten that before oh and he was also the former owner of the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Hawks but in 2011 Ted Turner was no longer the largest landowner in America when over a million acres of Leigh was purchased in Maine and New Hampshire by one man so who surpassed had to claim the number one spot the answer is John Malone now there aren't any public pictures available of him online that I could use without paying a fortune so if you want to know what he looks like go ahead and look him up John Malone owns over 2.1 million acres of land in America that's the equivalent of 1 million five hundred and ninety thousand nine hundred nine foot ball fields or 3281 square miles that's more land in the state of Rhode Island and Delaware while Ted Turner masses 2 million acres of land gradually since the 1970s Malone bought roughly 1.3 million in two years between 2010 and 2011 outside the US John also owns multiple high-profile hotels and castles in Ireland he is worth an estimated 6.6 billion dollars at the time this video is made so who is John Malone and how did he get so rich John Karl Malone was born on March 7th 1941 in Milford Connecticut a graduate of Yale and John Hopkins University's he holds a doctorate and operations research in 1973 after stints working with the prestigious consulting firm McKinsey & Company and general instruments where he ran a subsidy which produced many computers from the cable industry he was offered the CEO position on a small cable company called TCI in order to save it from going out of business by 1990 Malone had successfully grown TCI into the largest cable company in America in 1998 AT&T acquired TCI for 32 billion dollars that's for over forty nine billion in today's dollars Liberty media a TC i--'s subsidiary at the time remained a separate publicly traded company that john malone ran and is still the chairman to this very day during his tenure at Liberty Media Malone acquired the Discovery Channel Virgin Media QVC Lionsgate Stars game show network HGTV the Travel Channel the Food Network game Lana Braves and Formula One racing John Malone once said that he earned so much that money just didn't interest him it was the love of the game that drove him from an interview with the Irish town from 2015 John described his weakness for land as a virus he caught from Ted Turner nicknamed the cable cowboy John said he buys land because reprising the Mark Twain adage they aren't making it anymore but it's mostly because he loves being out on the land on horseback and the conservation of land for future generations is very important to him thanks for watching this episode of profiles if you like this video please hit those like subscribe and notification buttons I'll be uploading more content in this series in which I examine how real estate tycoons media moguls and other notable investors navigated the business climate of their time to become the kingpins of their generation

Channel: Danny Seeum

Views: 767,512

Rating: 4.8611441 out of 5

Keywords: largest landowner in america, largest land owner in the united states, who owns the most land in the U.S., who owns the most land in america, largest landowner in usa, largest landowners, largest landowner in north america, largest private landowner in north america, who is the largest landowner in the USA, who owns the most land in the USA, biggest landowners in usa, biggest landowners in the world, biggest ranches in the us, largest ranches in the us, land ownership

Id: FykhfKXmDc8

Length: 8min 26sec (506 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020