As a CEO, Dr. Henry Singleton generated such extraordinary returns that Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman Charlie Munger referred
to them as “miles higher than anybody else … utterly ridiculous.”

So wrote Will Thorndike in The Outsiders as he summarized Singleton’s tenure at Teledyne, Inc., the conglomerate he co-founded with a fellow Litton Industries alumnus George Kozmetsky and then led for decades.

Thorndike could just as well have been describing the off-the-charts ranch investments that Singleton made in the 1980s and 1990s that culminated with the sale of more than 1 million acres in 2025.

The Singleton Trust sold the California portfolio of the family’s ranches to Diana Singleton, one of Henry and Caroline Singleton’s five children. The family’s Golden State landholdings, which totaled approximately 90,000 acres, included the Peachtree and Topo Ranches in the Salinas Valley and the River Island Ranch in the foothills of the Sierras.

The family also sold most of its New Mexico ranches — 937,000 acres — to Stan Kroenke. The lone exception? Dr. Singleton’s first purchase, the historic 81,000-acre SAN CRISTOBAL RANCH, which was acquired by his son Will.

A dynamic entrepreneur, HENRY SINGLETON (1916–1999) co-founded industrial conglomerate Teledyne in 1960. Twenty-six years later, he bought his first ranch: the historic 81,000-acre San Cristobal Ranch in New Mexico’s Galisteo Basin just south of Santa Fe. In the years that followed, Singleton acquired more than 1 million acres, much of it former Spanish land grants.