Mormon Church Buys 370,000 Acres of Ranch Land (2024)

FAQs

How much land does the Mormon church own in the USA? ›

The Nebraska land is just one slice of the 1.7 million acres of American real estate the Mormon church is now estimated to own. That 1.7 million-acre total is likely an undercount, said Truth and Transparency co-founder Ryan McKnight, because it only includes corporations definitively traced back to the church.

The church sees its land buys as a force for good, an investment in agriculture “to generate long-term value to support the Church's religious, charitable, and humanitarian good works,” said a Farmland Reserve spokesman.

The church sees its land buys as a force for good, an investment in agriculture “to generate long-term value to support the Church's religious, charitable, and humanitarian good works,” said a Farmland Reserve spokesman.

Boasting a vast portfolio, spanning 678,000 acres throughout the state, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, has become the largest landowner in the state, possessing nearly 2% of Florida's total land mass.

3) The Emmerson Family

The largest private landowner in the United States is the Emmerson family, which owns and operates Sierra Pacific Industries, one of the largest lumber producers in the country.

Roman Catholic Church: 70 million hectares

The largest landowner in the world is not a major oil magnate or a real estate investor. No, it's the Roman Catholic Church.

Most ex-Mormons leave Mormonism and the LDS or RLDS Church because of intellectual reasons for finding the religion false or practices of Mormon organizations. The foremost reasons are disbelief both in Joseph Smith as a prophet and in the Book of Mormon as a religious and historical document.

The Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Over 70% of Utah is public land owned by the federal or state government. This land is renowned for its natural beauty.

Do Mormons believe the Garden of Eden is in Utah? ›

According to Mormon founder and prophet Joseph Smith, the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri. After the Fall, Adam traveled east of Eden, to what is now Daviess County, to the spot Mormons call Adam-Ondi-Ahman. The church now owns over 3,000 acres here, rolling farm land along the Grand River.

In both cases, both Latter-day Saints (sometimes called Mormons) and others have been helped by food grown on Church-owned farms. Currently, the Church owns 64 farms for welfare (i.e., nonprofit) purposes. Where are these farms located? Most are found within the United States.

Its biggest tracts in Missouri, perhaps not surprisingly, are in Jackson County on the Kansas border, with Independence as its county seat. The faith has more than 10,000 acres countywide, with 5,920 acres held in and around Independence's city limits.

Additionally, investigative journalism from the Truth & Transparency Foundation in 2022 suggests the church may be the owner of the most valuable real estate portfolio in the United States, with a minimum market value of $15.7 billion.

Its biggest tracts in Missouri, perhaps not surprisingly, are in Jackson County on the Kansas border, with Independence as its county seat. The faith has more than 10,000 acres countywide, with 5,920 acres held in and around Independence's city limits.

All told, the church's total wealth is now thought to have reached a new high of around $265 billion in 2023, according to The Widow's Mite, up by almost $29 billion from the previous year.

Based on the Utah land ownership data released in May 2009 by the State of Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration and the Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, federal lands comprise 64.3 percent of Utah; state lands comprise 10 percent of Utah; private lands comprise 21.1 percent of Utah; and ...