Bigger Than a State: Wyoming Mega-Ranch Changes Hands for Nearly $80 Million

The original story by Andrea Cavallier for the Independent.

A Wyoming ranch so massive it makes Rhode Island look small has officially found a new owner, ending months of guessing about who had the cash and the appetite for one of the biggest private land deals in the country.

The 916,000-acre Pathfinder Ranches has been purchased by Christopher Robinson, a local elected official and major landowner, through his family company, The Ensign Group L.C. The deal closed on January 14. While the ranch hit the market last summer with a price tag of $79.5 million, the final sale price hasn’t been made public.

And yes, the scale is hard to wrap your head around. Pathfinder Ranches stretches across four Wyoming counties and covers about 1 percent of the entire state. At roughly 1,431 square miles, it’s bigger than Rhode Island and almost the size of Delaware. For perspective, New York City clocks in at around 300 square miles.

Robinson, a Summit County Council member who already controls close to one million acres of land, is no stranger to thinking big. He bought the neighboring 86,000-acre Stone Ranch four years ago, and the latest acquisition effectively stitches the landscape together into one enormous operation.

“It’s now one big landscape,” Robinson said, explaining that the purchase reunites land that had been split up decades ago.

The plan isn’t to sit on the property as a trophy asset. Robinson says he intends to operate Pathfinder and Stone Ranch together as a single, self-sustaining livestock range. In other words, he sees himself as an operator, not a landlord.

“We’re not generally landlords,” Robinson said. “Over time, we’ll be mostly running our own livestock on it.”

The ranch itself is as historic as it is huge. Named after 19th-century explorer John C. Frémont, Pathfinder Ranches includes four main properties across the Rocky Mountain region. It wraps around much of Pathfinder Reservoir, contains more than 20 miles of the Sweetwater River, and spans parts of the Pedro, Ferris, Seminoe, and Green Mountain ranges.

One standout landmark is Independence Rock, a famous waypoint along the Oregon, Mormon, Pony Express, and California Trails. Sections of those pioneer routes still run through the property.

While Robinson doesn’t yet rank among America’s very largest private landowners – that title currently belongs to billionaire Stan Kroenke with roughly 2.7 million acres – this deal firmly places him in rare territory. CNN founder Ted Turner, for comparison, owns around two million acres nationwide.

Beyond the business logic, Robinson says the purchase is also about conservation and long-term stewardship.

“We love land and water,” he said. “We think it’s a good long-term investment, and we like the opportunities it gives us to be good stewards of it.”

In short, Pathfinder Ranches didn’t just sell to the highest bidder. It went to someone betting that bigger can still mean sustainable – and that in Wyoming, thinking on a state-sized scale still makes sense.