{"id":103882,"date":"2026-01-18T11:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T11:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/103882\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T11:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T11:36:07","slug":"wyoming-pathfinder-ranches-buyer-revealed-to-be-ensign-group-ceo-christopher-robinson-as-property-is-larger-than-rhode-island-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/103882\/","title":{"rendered":"Wyoming Pathfinder Ranches buyer revealed to be Ensign Group CEO Christopher Robinson \u2014 as property is larger than Rhode Island, NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mysterious buyer of a Wyoming ranch four times larger<\/a> than New York City and bigger than the state of Rhode Island has been identified as a chief executive officer and local politician who already owns a million acres of land.<\/p>\n

Christopher Robinson, the CEO of Ensign Group L.C., scooped up the massive 916,000-acre Pathfinder Ranches on behalf of the landholding company and closed the deal on Jan. 14, according to KPCW<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Robinson purchased the land for an undisclosed amount, only four years after he bought the neighboring Stone Ranch.<\/p>\n

The massive property, which rolls across 1,431-square-miles<\/a>, was listed over the summer by Swan Land Company broker Scott Williams for a whopping $79.5 million. New York City spans across 300.4 square miles, while Rhode Island spans 1,033.9.<\/p>\n

Christopher Robinson, the CEO of landholding company Ensign Group L.C., scooped up the massive 916,000-acre Pathfinder Ranches and closed the deal on Jan. 14. Summit County Utah<\/p>\n

Spreading across four counties in the Rocky Mountains, the Pathfinder Ranches is made up of four separate properties and encompasses over 1% of the land in the Cowboy State.<\/p>\n

Actual deedage acreage of the historic purchase added up to 99,188 acres with the additional land coming from leases, according to the Cowboy State Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Park City, Utah resident is using the smaller ranch to bridge together the Pathfinder Ranches properties and create a self-sustainable livestock range. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we\u2019re kind of reuniting that, and we intend to, we\u2019re operators,\u201d Robinson told the outlet. \u201cWe\u2019re not generally landlords. We\u2019re going to, over time, grow into it, where we\u2019re mostly running our own livestock on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spreading across four counties in the Rocky Mountains, the Pathfinder Ranches is made up of four separate properties and encompasses over 1% of the land in the Cowboy State. SwanLandCompany\/Youtube<\/p>\n

Robinson plans to work the property\u2019s livestock to become self-sufficient rather than buying from outside the ranch.<\/p>\n

The land was estimated to have a capacity of 90,444 Animal Unit Months, the amount of livestock a rangeland can support.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith cattle prices as high as they are, we\u2019re not going to be buying any mother cows to stock,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u00a0keep a lot of heifers back anyway, so we\u2019re going to grow internally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf things get really tough, we\u2019ll get rid of yearlings,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t get rid of mother cows. There have been droughts and things in the past, but we\u2019ve got enough scale and flexibility that we can sell the yearlings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tStart your day with all you need to know\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMorning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The Ensign Group, co-owned by Robinson and his siblings Alexander and Victoria Robinson, has acquired over 1 million acres of private and public lands throughout Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming\u00a0under the Ensign Ranches moniker.<\/p>\n

Before the massive purchase, the Robinson and Freed portfolio ranked at number 31 on Land Report Magazine\u2019s Top 100 Landowner List.<\/a><\/p>\n

Pathfinder Ranches may push the group\u2019s portfolio to over 470,000 acres up 10 spots on the list and surpassing billionaire Jeff Bezos\u2019 own impressive 462,000 acres, according to KPCW.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe love land and water. We think it\u2019s a good long-term investment, and we like the opportunities it affords us to be stewards over a piece of God\u2019s creation,\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n

Pathfinder Ranches is four-times larger than New York City and bigger than the state of Rhode Island. Merrill Sherman \/ NY Post Design<\/p>\n

Robinson, a graduate from the University of Utah, is one of the five members of the Summit County Council, a seat he has held since his election in 2008, according to the county\u2019s website.<\/a><\/p>\n

He has extensive experience in production agriculture, local government, mineral and resource development, public lands, renewable energy and conservation efforts.<\/p>\n

In December, Robinson announced that he would not run for reelection. <\/p>\n

Robinson is also on the board of several conservation and land groups in the Utah area.<\/p>\n

The land was estimated to have a capacity of 90,444 Animal Unit Months, the amount of livestock a rangeland can support. SwanLandCompany\/Youtube<\/p>\n

The newly purchased land is also home to a diverse ecosystem of wildlife including housing the US\u2019s first sage-grouse conservation bank.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a statewide bank that, if there\u2019s any damage to, disturbance to, core habitat for greater sage-grouse, one option for mitigation would be to buy credits from the Pathfinder,\u201d Robinson told the outlet. \u201c[The property has] got a lot of sage grouse on it, a lot of antelope, pronghorn, deer and elk. It\u2019s teeming with life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The property, named after rolling foothills, high plains and broad river valleys, is a cowboy\u2019s dream and one of Swan Land\u2019s largest sales in Wyoming.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what we specialize in are the large complicated transactions,\u201d Williams told the Cowboy State Daily. \u201cAnd the beauty of this is the buyers are excellent ranchers, but they\u2019re also conservation-minded operators as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a plan that will take some time to realize,\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mysterious buyer of a Wyoming ranch four times larger than New York City and bigger than the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64,1491,8028,21601],"class_list":["post-103882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-real-estate","tag-surreal-estate","tag-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}