Stan Kroenke is the nation’s largest private landowner

The purchase of a New Mexico ranch nearing 1 million acres tipped the scales for Stan Kroenke, who is now the largest private landowner in America.

Kroenke, 78, topped Land Report’s annual list of the country’s 100 largest landowners, leading a pack of billionaires eager to beef up their rural portfolios.

Kroenke is worth an estimated $26.8 billion, according to Bloomberg, largely thanks to his ownership of sport franchises like the Los Angeles Rams, the Denver Nuggets and the UK’s Arsenal Football Club — as well as several of the teams’ sports arenas.

Kroenke, a Missouri native, is married to Walmart heiress Ann Walton Kroenke.

Kroenke recently acquired more than 937,000 acres of noncontiguous New Mexico ranchland, rounding out his total land holdings to more than 2.7 million acres across the American West and Canada.

Land Report confirmed the December deal, which spans four New Mexico counties. The off-market transaction is the largest single land purchase in the US since 2011.

The price of Kroenke’s New Mexico purchase remains under wraps, but Land Report estimated the former value of his ranch holdings at $3.9 billion.

Kroenke made headlines in 2016 when he snapped up Texas’ historic Waggoner Ranch — the 535,000-acre property is largest piece of unbroken ranchland in the Lone Star State. Other acquisitions include massive ranches in Montana and Nevada.

In addition to rolling rural plains, Kroenke owns an estimated 60 million square feet of commercial holdings, the New York Times reported, including sports venues in California and Denver.

The investor’s busy two decades of ranch acquisitions has set him far above other high-profile billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

Bezos’ holdings ranked 21st in Land Report’s report, spanning close to half a million acres largely concentrated in Texas. Gates trailed behind in 44th place, whose prolific farmland purchases span roughly 275,000 acres.

An uptick in rural land grabs among billionaires over the past decade was hastened along in recent years by the lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic and the so-called “Yellowstone Effect.”