American land barons: 100 wealthy families now own nearly as much land as that of New England

The federal government is by far the nation's biggest land owner, holding 640 million acres of purple mountains, fruited plains and amber waves of grain in the name of the American public.

But over the past decade, the nation's wealthiest private landowners have been laying claim to ever-larger tracts of the countryside, according to data compiled by the Land Report, a magazine about land ownership in America.