Land Barons
While American grit settled the west it was cattle barons from England and Scotland that bankrolled it. I’m Susan Allen inviting you to stay tuned for today’s Open Range .By the late 1880’s the best of our western grasslands were controlled by the British bankers, lords and lawyers. Using the power of cattle associations the British upper crust launched a land invasion, until they met opposition with a bill introduced in 1884 that would prohibit Europeans from buying up western rangelands. Hard to imagine that occurring in today’s poltical climate. Back then our frontiersman’s feared that absentee owners and titled gentry would turn the west into another British Colony, and eventually the opposition to what we today would be called, mega ranches won out. Yet We still have our land barons, the largest of which is John C. Malone a media mogul who will soon overtake Ted Turner’s claim to being the biggest landowner in the U.S. To date Malone owns the 290,000 acre Bell Ranch in New Mexico and 68,000 acres in Maine. When his latest purchase of 980,000 acres in Maine’s north Woods and 20,000 acres New Hampshire are finalized, “Baron” Malone will own 2.1 million acres beating Turners claim of 2 million. In a recent New York Times piece Eric O’Keefe editor of The Land Report wrote that modern day land baron’s "aren’t out of the same mold " as those of the old west calling the acquisition for both Turner and Malone about stewardship. You make that call. I’m Susan Allen
