The History of Real Estate in American Land Ownership: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today’s Largest Landowners

This piece was originally written and published for inman news for the American Semiquincentennial. Part I and Part II. Here, I’ve included bonus content, that would not fit with in their publishing guidelines, and combined both parts into one for your ease of reading.

A warning, however: this is a long read with a lot of unique and rare history tidbits and a few too many dad jokes.

“Under all is the land.”

For more than a century, those words have appeared in the preamble to the Realtor Code of Ethics. Most agents have heard them. Few spend much time thinking about them.

As America celebrates its 250th birthday, I thought it worth revisiting.

Because before there were listings, mortgages, title companies, zoning boards, brokerages, or Realtors, there was land. And before there was a real estate industry, there was a question that would shape the next two and a half centuries of American history:

Who owns the most of America?

Not surprisingly, many of the Founding Fathers were substantial landowners. In much of early America, you often couldn’t vote unless you owned property. George Washington certainly qualified, accumulating more than 52,000 acres during his lifetime. For many of the founders, land ownership wasn’t simply wealth. It was influence, independence, and political power.

The men who gathered to establish the country’s institutions weren’t just political leaders. They were creating a system of ownership.

The generations that came before us didn’t just assemble the map. They established the boundaries, ownership rights, and legal framework that allowed land to be bought, sold, inherited, financed, and transferred from one generation to the next.

Real estate wasn’t adjacent to the American experiment. It was and has been at the center of it. This real estate framework wasn’t built overnight, and it wasn’t built to perfection.

Some land was purchased. Some was annexed. Some changed hands through treaties following war. Much of it was already inhabited, used, and governed by Native nations long before any of those transactions took place. Over time, those lands were taken, ceded, negotiated, or lost, depending on the moment and the perspective.

This isn’t a clean real estate story, and it wasn’t easy. There were mistakes, regrets, and omissions. Realtors today will tell you that’s how most every real estate deal still is.

But it is the American origin story of the land, livelihood, and ownership we have today.

The Original Listing Inventory

On July 4, 1776, the United States consisted of thirteen colonies stretched along the Atlantic coast. The young nation was small by modern standards and uncertain of its future. Yet even then, land sat at the center of the country’s ambitions. Farmers wanted access to new acreage. Merchants wanted access to rivers and ports. The population grew, and wanted more room.

Beyond the original states, Native nations still occupied and governed most of the continent. Many Native cultures viewed land differently than European settlers did. While beliefs varied from nation to nation, land was often seen less as a commodity to be bought and sold and more as something to be stewarded, shared, or used collectively. The ownership system being developed by the young United States reflected a very different set of assumptions.

The country, in a sense, had the same motivations buyers and sellers have today. It was looking for opportunity, access, and room to grow… and occasionally a better deal than anyone thought possible.

At the same time, the ownership framework itself was evolving. In much of early America, meaningful property ownership was largely limited to white men. Women faced significant restrictions. Enslaved people were legally treated as property rather than owners.

Over time, that changed.

Not quickly, fairly, or evenly, but the ownership framework expanded. Property rights broadened. Vermont became the 14th state in 1791, the first to be voted on by congress. Additional states rapidly entered the Union. More Americans gained access to a system that allowed land to be bought, sold, inherited, financed, and transferred.

If you’ve seen Hamilton, (my daughters had it on loop for months) you’ll remember the debates between Jefferson and Hamilton over the future of the young nation. Both men understood the importance of land. Jefferson envisioned an agrarian republic built on farmer-led landownership and homesteads. Hamilton envisioned a commercial power connected by trade, ports, railroads, and industry.

America was fortunate enough to become both.

The real estate deals that followed would help make that possible.

1803 — The Deal That Doubled America

The Louisiana Purchase cost the United States $15 million.

Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly $400 million today. But inflation doesn’t really tell the story.

For roughly the cost of this active 5-bedroom, 4-bath, 8,000-square-foot luxury ranch currently listed in Louisiana, the United States doubled in size.

Jefferson acquired approximately 828 million acres from France, including all or part of fifteen modern states, for about three cents an acre. The transaction secured control of the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans, both critical to trade and westward expansion.

France needed cash to fund wars in Europe. The United States needed control of the Mississippi River and the port of New Orleans.

Access to trade routes has always mattered. Whether it’s the Mississippi in 1803 or the Strait of Hormuz today, nations tend to pay attention when commerce stops flowing through a narrow choke point controlled by someone else.

More than two centuries later, it remains one of the most consequential real estate transactions in history, and arguably one of the greatest real estate bargains ever negotiated. Looking back nearly 250 years later, it’s difficult to find another transaction that reshaped the future of a nation so dramatically.

Unless, that is, you talk with someone from Texas.

1845 — Everything Is Bigger in Texas

Unlike Louisiana, Texas was not purchased.

After nearly a decade as an independent republic, Texas joined the United States through annexation in 1845. The decision was driven by politics, economics, security concerns, and westward expansion.

Texas wasn’t simply about acquiring more land and the stars at night that are big and bright. It was about security, growth, and strategic depth.

The motivations sound familiar. Communities still expand for many of the same reasons. They want room to grow, economic opportunity, and a buffer against future uncertainty.

At one point, Texas claimed territory extending into parts of present-day western Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. That’s truly bigger.

1848 — Buying the Best Coast

Three years later, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and transferred approximately 529 million acres to the United States.

The acquisition included land that would eventually become California, Nevada, Utah, most of Arizona and New Mexico, and portions of several other states. The United States paid $15 million, nearly identical to the Louisiana Purchase, and roughly the price of a waterfront Malibu estate today.

The Mexican Cession gave the United States something it desperately wanted. But they were not buying it just for the chill vibes, warm sunset views and accessible surfboard flow yoga. Access to the Pacific was access to an entirely new economic future.

However, there were some political consequences within the young nation. Texans had to reduce their state’s footprint drastically, scaling back to its current footprint for a pile of cash paid for by Uncle Sam.

Amazingly, less than two weeks before the treaty was signed, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California. The timing would prove extraordinary. That apparently didn’t show up on the pre-cession inspection, or Mexico would surely have raised the price.

Looking back, this appears to have been a pretty good acquisition.

1853 — Location, Location, Location

The Gadsden Purchase. Huh… Yeah.
Well, truthfully, I completely forgot about the Gadsden Purchase. Actually, I don’t recall ever having learned about it… Was it really a thing? Perhaps I was sick that day.

In fairness, most Americans are probably in my boat too. Anywho, it added another 30 million acres, largely to secure a viable southern route for a transcontinental railroad. Duh.

Unlike the California gold discovery, this one actually showed up during due diligence. But it was Infrastructure that drove the decision.

Highways, rail corridors, ports, airports, fiber networks, and utility investments continue to influence where people live, where businesses invest, and how land is valued.

Location. Some things never change, even if you’ve never heard of it.

1867 — Seward’s Folly

If Louisiana was the greatest real estate bargain in American history, Alaska may be the runner-up.

For $7.2 million, the United States acquired approximately 365 million acres from Russia, or roughly two cents per acre. At 2.5 times larger than Texas, critics mocked the deal at the time, referring to it as “Seward’s Folly.”

However, history and hindsight have been considerably kinder.

The purchase included untold natural resource wealth, including oil, natural gas, minerals, timber, fisheries, and strategic access to both the Arctic and Pacific. Alaska later proved its military value during World War II, when Japanese forces occupied portions of America’s Aleutian Islands, killed American troops and civilians, and forced the United States to fight on its own land to reclaim its own territory. (Fellow history nerds, The Thousand-Mile War is an unbelievable read.)

So valuable is the land, in fact, that eligible Alaska residents still receive annual dividends funded by the state’s natural resource revenues. Depending on the year, those payments can amount to several thousand dollars per resident.

Not bad for a deal signed in 1867.

1898 — Aloha, America

Not every addition to the map came through a purchase.

Officially, Hawaii entered the United States through annexation in 1898. But, that overly simplifies the reality. The path was complicated, controversial, and heavily influenced by American commercial and military interests. “Annexation” in this case was big sugar and the US military overthrowing the Hawaiian queen, who yielded her authority conditionally to avoid bloodshed. CC: Captain Cook. (History nerds should also read The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides)

At the time, the Pacific was no longer a frontier. It was basically an ocean highway for commerce.

The specific geography was unique. The underlying motivation was not. Commerce, security, and access to emerging markets remained as important as ever.

The Map Was Assembled

By the end of the nineteenth century, the land and the external boundaries of the map we recognize today were largely in place.

The country had expanded from thirteen colonies to forty-five states and from a narrow strip of Atlantic coastline to a continental nation stretching from ocean to ocean. It had also achieved something few nations in history ever have… an ocean-sized moat on either side.

The generations that came before us had assembled more than a nation. They had established the boundaries, ownership rights, and legal framework that allowed land to be bought, sold, inherited, financed, and transferred from one generation to the next.

Looking back, the motivations were surprisingly familiar. Trade, security, infrastructure, resources and access to new markets. The same forces that shape real estate decisions today were shaping national ones 250 years ago.

That’s the version of the story most of us learned in school, and many forgot immediately after the test. What receives far less attention is what happened after the land entered the ownership system. Because acquiring the land was only the beginning.

The story of who ended up owning it is where things get really interesting. That’s where the story goes next.

PART II
Who Ended Up Owning America?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious.

Ask most Americans who owns the most land in the United States, and they’ll guess today’s famous billionaires. Familiar names like Bezos, Musk or Gates. The fact is, none of them crack the top 10, and the fourth-largest private landowner, Ted Turner just died last month.

But before we get there, we need to understand how the land moved from public ownership into private hands, and who could even hold land in the first place.

The Map Was Built. Now what?

At the end of Part I, America had assembled the map.

The nation stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Louisiana and the Midwest had been purchased. Texas was annexed, the West Coast, Alaska and Hawaii added to round out today’s identifiable United States.

The next question was obvious: What did we really own? The land wasn’t immediately divided into farms, ranches, towns, and states. First it had to be measured, mapped, cataloged, and connected.

To discover what it had acquired, Lewis and Clark explored the Louisiana Territory from St Louis to Astoria, Oregon. Official surveyors and Railroad companies mapped routes through mountains, deserts, and plains. Prospectors searched for wealth. Settlers tried to cross it and got dysentery. (Ahh… shoot. Forgive me. I may be mixing up real history and the Oregon Trail Game — or not.)

Now it was time to divide the inventory – but only to a select few.

Expanding Ownership

The ownership system itself evolved over time, and hardly anyone was invited to participate from the beginning.

In much of early America, meaningful property ownership was largely limited to white men. Married women often lost control of property through a legal doctrine known as coverture, under which a wife’s legal identity was largely absorbed into her husband’s. (We still use part of this English common-law doctrine today when women take their husbands’ last name. Traditions are strong, eh?) A woman could inherit property from her father, yet after marriage lose the ability to independently manage or control it. That feels almost impossible to imagine today, but it was standard practice for generations.

In 1848, that began to change. New York passed the Married Women’s Property Act, allowing married women to own and manage property in their own names. Other states gradually followed. Like many changes in American history, it happened slowly, then seemingly all at once.

For millions of people living in the United States, exclusion from the ownership system was even more drastic. Enslaved people were legally treated as property rather than as people. “Property” could not own property. Native Americans also could not own land – only their tribes could, via treaties.

(Alert: the next paragraph is a High School History Class reminder. *You have been warned)

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, but it wasn’t for 2 more years for the South to surrender, ending the Civil War. Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment. Further citizenship protections established by the 14th Amendment in 1868 (if you are born here, you are an American) expanded access to the ownership system for many. In reality, equal access to land, credit and opportunity remained a much longer struggle.

Little house on the Prairie

Once ownership rights began expanding, the federal government faced a different question.

What should it do with all that land?

One of the most important answers came in 1862 with the Homestead Act. For a filing fee of $10 (a year’s wages for a farm hand was around $277) and a commitment to build a home and improve the land in five years. These homesteaders could claim 160 acres of their choosing, from the available public domain.

The same land that the US had “just” bought from France for $0.03 per acre. So… Ole Honest Abe was America’s first real estate flipper.

Over the next 126 years, more than 270 million acres, roughly 10 percent of all land in the United States, moved from federal ownership into private hands.

But not to all private hands. On paper, the Homestead Act was open to formerly enslaved people. In practice, systemic discrimination, extreme poverty, violence, and hostile state and local laws meant only a tiny fraction were ever able to claim a homestead.

The Homestead Act’s final claim was filed in 1974, for a plot in Alaska.

The Homestead Act isn’t just history to me. My family benefited directly from the program in both Kansas and Indiana. If you’ve ever flown into Indianapolis, you’ve likely touched down on land that was once part of our family’s holdings. Part of the airport’s footprint sits on what was once our homestead, from back in the 1880s.

Hell on Wheels

To encourage the construction of a transcontinental railroad, Congress also granted enormous tracts of land to privately held railroad companies in a grid across the West. Depending on how you count them, those land grants totaled 174 million acres.

The railroads didn’t simply move people across the continent. They became some of the largest private landowners in American history.

So Who Owns America?

Well, we do. With the government owning 640 million acres, it stands to reason that each American, regardless of age, would theoretically own about 2 acres each. The reality brings us back to the question from the beginning.

Who owns the most land in America?

Stan Kroenke ~2.7 million acres. Built his fortune through commercial real estate, sports franchises (Rams, Nuggets, Avalanche, Arsenal FC), and marrying a Walmart heir.

Emmerson Family (Sierra Pacific Industries) ~2.4 million acres. Built one of the nation’s largest privately held lumber companies; their land is primarily working timberland.

John Malone ~2.2 million acres. Made his fortune in cable television through TCI and Liberty Media, then quietly accumulated ranches and timberland over decades.

*Ted Turner ~2 million acres. Built Turner Broadcasting (CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network), then invested heavily in ranches, conservation, and bison restoration. (*deceased 5/6/26)

Reed Family (Green Diamond Resource Company) ~1.66 million acres. Multi-generational timber business with extensive working forests across the West.

Under All Is the Land

The story of American land ownership isn’t really about acreage. It’s about the transfer of real estate.

The same parcel, acre or home can move from government ownership to a homesteader, from a homesteader to a family farm, from a family farm to an airport, subdivision, office park, or shopping center. It’s a true part of the American dream.

The generations that came before us assembled the map. The generations that followed divided it, developed it, inherited it and transferred it.

I think Mark Twain got it right: “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.”