The Top 100 Private Land Owners in the USA

The United States Government owns 640 Million acres of land (about 28% of the country's land mass). Of the privately held lands, 40 million acres (about the size of Florida) are owned by 100 individuals. This map from Bloomberg shows who these people are and where (most of) their land is.

A zoom in shows you who these people are - a combination of investors, energy company owners, ranchers, media moguls, heirs and various other wealthy people. Here is the Texas Panhandle and northeastern New Mexico,

and southwestern Texas-the blue piece furthest west is owned by Jeff Bezos where one of his companies tests a reusable rocket.

Here are the top 10 landowners with the acreage (in the millions) they own.

Most of this land is in the western half of the country. Here are some holdings surrounding Yellowstone National Park.

There is not much action in the east, except for in Georgia, Florida and Maine where seven families collectively control a quarter of the state's land, including Subway (the restaurant, not the transportation option) co-founder Peter Buck.

Mapping the A:shiwi Perspective

The A:shiwi Map Art Initiative is an indigenous mapping project sponsored by the A;shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center on the Zuni Reservation in New Mexico. The project seeks to challenge ideas of what maps are. To the Zuni, or A:shiwi people they are more about telling stories than about scale and direction.

Little Colorado River - Larson Gasper, 2009 via Emergence Magazine

There is an excellent article on this project with videos and maps in Emergence Magazine. According to Jim Enote, the museum's director more native lands have been lost through mapping than through physical contact. These maps seek to reclaim their land, names (including their own people's name) and memories.

Ho'n A:wan Dehwa:we (Our Land) - Ronnie Cachini, 2006 via Emergence Magazine

In the map above the modern road network intersects an otherwise dream-like landscape.

Migration of Salt Mother - Larson Gasper, 2009 via Emergence Magazine

Shiba:bulima - Levon Loncassion

These maps are in a traveling exhibition that has appeared in New York, Los Angeles, Albuquerque and Flagstaff.

Most of these are in the form of traditional paintings but there are also a couple of digital paintings.

"The maps represent landscapes but also historical events, such as Zuni migrations and Zuni relationships to places throughout the Colorado Plateau. The maps also guide viewers through Zuni cosmological processes where water, plants, animals, and even the sky make up the unique Zuni world. The exhibition shows how Zuni see their own history, their ancestral migrations, their ancient homes, and the parts of nature that sustains them."

Bob Dylan's World

A couple of weeks ago Slate honored Bob Dylan's 72nd birthday with an interactive map of every place mentioned in one of his songs.

Many musicians would show a pattern based on where they are from. In Dylan's case the only pattern is the unusually high number of points in northern Minnesota. However, there are also lots of points in New Mexico, where he sometimes pretended to be from. 

From the text on the web page:

Bob Dylan’s music, it’s often said, happens in a world of its own—where the highway is for gamblers and you’re always 1,000 miles from home. It’s a surreal, ethereal realm, lawless but for chance, allusion, and rhyme.

You can pan and zoom as desired or use one of their choices at the bottom- World, U.S., Europe, Asia, NYC or New Orleans.

12/12/12

Happy 12/12/12!

 Here are some maps and boring facts about highways designated as Route 12 - mostly from Wikipedia.

US Interstate 12 is one of the shortest major (one or two digit) interstates in the country running 85 miles along the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain all in Louisiana. It is a shortcut that takes you from Interstate 10 back to Interstate 10 avoiding New Orleans. The road is also officially called the Republic of West Florida Parkway, in honor of that short lived republic created from an 1810 rebellion against Spanish rule.

By contrast US Route 12 is an almost cross country route running from Detroit to Aberdeen, Washington, almost 2,500 miles. The photo on the lower left was taken near the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Cass, where Route 12 officially begins. This photo came from the US Ends, a web site for people like me who are obsessed with where roads begin and end. On the left is a map of the Grays Harbor area at the western end of Route 12.

South Korea's Expressway Number 12 is also called the 88 Olympic Expressway. It runs across the southern part of the country.

There's many other highway 12's listed on Wikipedia's List of highways numbered 12 inlcuding the following three non-US routes chosen because I like their route shields.

Finally realizing that I forgot the awesome Kansas sunflower route shields (despite K-12 being retired,) here is another set of US state route shields. Once again, Happy 12/12/12!