Land Report 100
Who is America’s
Largest Landowner?
This question is the quest of the Land Report 100 Research Team all year long.
In 2025, America’s largest landowner is Red Emmerson. Red and his family own 2,440,000 acres in California, Oregon, and Washington through their timber-products company, Sierra Pacific Industries. The Emmersons became America’s largest landowners in 2021 when they acquired 175,000 acres in Oregon from Seneca Timber Company. With that acquisition, the Emmersons surpassed Liberty Media chairman John Malone’s 2,200,000 acres. CNN founder Ted Turner is America’s third largest landowner with 2 million acres in the Southeast, on the Great Plains, and across the West.
The Land Report 100 Research Team analyzes transactions and scours records to determine America’s leading landowners. That’s how we broke the news in 2020 that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was America’s largest farmland owner with more than 260,000 acres. That’s how we identified Shanda Investment Group founder Tianqiao Chen as the owner of almost 200,000 acres of Oregon timberland in 2024. It’s one of the many reasons why news organizations worldwide rely on the Magazine of the American Landowner to understand this asset class.
Top 100
Landowner List
A note from Steve Bruere:
Since 2007, this survey of America’s leading landowners has been the gold standard for private land ownership.
Top 100
Landowner List
A note from Steve Bruere:
Since 2007, this survey of America’s leading landowners has been the gold standard for private land ownership.
Landowner stories
Stefan Soloviev moves like an athlete but has a mathlete’s [...]
Diploma in hand, Dow Brantley left Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1998 [...]
America’s largest farmland owner, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, ranks 43rd [...]
In September, Taylor Sheridan purchased the 179-acre Papa’s Creek Ranch [...]
