According to The Land Report, published by Fay Ranches, the top 100 owners of US land collectively have 33 million acres in their private holdings. This equates to about 1.5% of all USA land – that may seem like a small percentage, but it’s actually a massive area.

Here, I’ve graphed the top 10 largest private landowners and included the areas of Puerto Rico, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. for scale. As you can see, all of the top 10 own a piece of the USA that is bigger than Rhode Island, and five have a piece that is at least as big as Delaware. John Malone, who is the largest land owner in the country with 2.2 million acres, owns private property the size of Puerto Rico.

Data sources: http://fayranches.com/press/fay-ranches-sponsors-2013-land-report-100

https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0358.pdf