The Magazine of the American Landowner is an essential guide for investors, landowners, and those interested in buying or selling land. The award-winning quarterly is known for its annual survey of America's largest landowners, The Land Report 100.
Issue link: http://landreport.epubxp.com/i/582499
Scott Family 220,000 acres Homer Scott was fresh out of engineering s chool when he was sent westward in 1935 to open new territory for his then employer. The rangelands agreed with him, and in 1943 he bought the 3,000-acre Padlock Ranch in Wyoming to graze Hereford cows. The Pad- lock is still family owned, but its borders have grown into neighboring Montana where the family runs more than 10,000 cattle on a mix- ture of private and leased land located on or near the Crow Indian Reservation. Louis Bacon 218,331 acres 210,678 under conservation In the last two years, conservation philan- thropist Louis Bacon made continued in- roads to build upon conservation and restoration initiatives across his properties and worked to protect other special places throughout the country. In 2014, The Moore Charitable Foundation partnered with Middlebury College to establish the Bread Loaf Preservation Fund, which will preserve and maintain the Bread Loaf campus and the surrounding forests and fields while also supporting educational programming and recreational activities. Much of the 2,100 acres will be protected through a conserva- tion easement held by the Vermont Land Trust working in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy. The Orton Foundation, the North Carolina affiliate of Bacon's Moore Charitable Foundation, supports The Nature Conservancy's efforts to restore the iconic longleaf pine forest throughout North Carolina's Coastal Plain. At Orton Plantation, Bacon is restoring thousands of acres of longleaf pine forest through controlled burns and other management practices with the goal of restoring 11,000 acres by 2017. East Wildlife Foundation 215,729 acres up 729 acres Tom East Sr. first registered his Diamond Bar brand in 1912 and proceeded to aggressively acquire land throughout South Texas, includ- ing the legendary Llanos Mesteños, the stark landscape where the last of the wild Spanish mustangs roamed in the early 20th century. 106 The LandReport | W I N T E R 2 0 1 5 LANDREPORT.COM Ranch and the 106,065-acre LE Ranch, two o f the most historically significant cattle operations on the South Plains.Each enjoys a legacy that dates back to the 1800s. Koch Family 239,000 acres Koch Industries is a multinational enterprise whose holdings include Koch Pipeline, Koch Fertilizer, and Koch Minerals. The family's ranch holdings date back to 1952, when Fred Koch founded Matador Cattle Co., which operates in Texas and Montana. Riggs Family 236,317 acres up 133,495 acres Additional rangeland in New Mexico used for cattle grazing helped double the Riggs Family holdings. The clan likewise maintains deep roots in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona's Cochise County, which patriarch Brannick Riggs settled in the 19th century. One of the family's pair of sustainable com- munities is named for the Alabama-born patriarch who began his career driving a mule team for the United States Army. Kenedy Memorial Foundation 235,000 Acres NEW TO LIST This vast ranch owned by the Kenedy Memorial Foundation was created by Sarita Kenedy East in honor of her parents, John Gregory Kenedy Sr. and Marie Stella Turcotte Kenedy. The nonprofit Kenedy Foundation Ranch lies just an hour's drive south of Corpus Christi, in the coastal bend of South Texas Rio Grande Plains, and features a vast range of climates. The ranch is comprised of four sections, including landscapes rich in natural diversity, from native prairie brush to coastal marshes and even a serene beach. Bidegain Family 225,000 acres Alongside sons Donnie and Scott, and with the help of wife, Laurie, Philip Bidegain oversees operations of T4 Cattle Company, founded in 1902 by his great-grandmother in Eastern New Mexico. Widely admired for sensitive and savvy land management, the family has bred Quarter Horses on their property since World War II. 41 | 42 | 43 | 45 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 44 | 46 | The Land Report 100 Today, the East Wildlife Foundation's range- lands also support some 5,000 head of cattle. Hearst Family 214,000 acres Media magnate William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) made history with his publish- ing empire, but it was his father, George Hearst (1820–1891), who built the family fortune. And it all began with land. (See Henry Chappell's profile of Hearst Ranch in the Summer 2014 issue of The Land Report.) The elder Hearst was a Missouri native who ventured to California as a '49er. A decade later, he and his partners hit pay dirt with the Comstock Lode, the biggest silver rush in American history. Hearst parlayed this success into sundry other mining interests, including South Dakota's Homestake Mine and Montana's Anaconda Copper Mine. He also bought 48,000 acres of ranchland near the tiny town of San Simeon in Central California. He eventually expanded that initial purchase to 270,000 acres. Today, the family's rural landholdings in California include the 80,000-acre Piedra Blanca Rancho at San Simeon, the 73,000-acre Jack Ranch near Cholame, and 61,000 acres of timberland in Northern California. Gage Heirs 213,730 acres In 1879, soon after moving from Vermont to the Big Bend region of Far West Texas, 21-year-old Alfred Gage began to learn the cattle trade and began acquiring small plots of land throughout the Trans-Pecos region. By the end of his days, he had accumulated enough resources to build the Gage Hotel in Marathon, which first welcomed guests in 1927. Cassidy Heirs 212,985 acres As a boy of 10, John Cassidy crossed the Atlantic from his native Ireland with nothing more than a pack on his back. He hauled bricks to make ends meet. Buying up Maine timberland at $2 and $3 an acre in the late 1800s, he founded Cassidy Timberlands, which is still based in Bangor with holdings throughout the Pine State. 40 |