Mysterious buyer of $79.5 million ranch four times the size of NYC has been revealed

The mystery of who bought a sprawling ranch in Wyoming, which is often compared to one that features in the TV show Yellowstone, has been solved after the buyer was revealed to be a politician and businessman.

Stretching over close to a million acres across the Rocky Mountains, the picturesque Pathfinder Ranches are larger than Rhode Island, four times larger than New York City, and constitute one of the biggest working ranches in the state.

They even make up just over 1 per cent of Wyoming's landmass, but parts of this 1431 square mile expanse of cattle country had fallen into separate ownerships after various sales since 1975, including an 86,000-acre ranch at its heart.

This small portion was bought out by a local politician and part-owner of a business with an increasingly massive portfolio of land, Summit County Council member Chris Robinson and his company Ensign, which he runs with his two siblings.

The Pathfinder Ranch has been running a cattle operation for over a century (Robert Nickelsberg/Liaison)

Speaking to KPCW, Robinson explained how the purchase had united previously disparate sections of the Pathfinder Ranches, which stretch across four counties in the state. He said: “The family from whom we bought the Stone Ranch used to own the heart of the Pathfinder, and they sold it in, say, 1975. And so we're kind of reuniting it.

“It's now one big landscape.”

While the property was put on the market for $79.5 million, Robinson did not disclose what price was finally settled on for the ranches, which will continue to be used for vast cattle herds, with Cowboy State Daily reporting a potential livestock capacity of over 90,000.

Real estate broker Swan Land Company also refused to disclose the sum to the publication, but did say the land sale was one of their largest in the state.

They added: "This is what we specialize in are the large complicated transactions. And the beauty of this is the buyers are excellent ranchers, but they're also conservation-minded operators as well."

Robinson has a history of cattle farming in the area (Getty Images)

And looking after this pristine stretch of Wyoming's wilderness will be a major part of the new owners' stewardship over the land, with Chris and siblings Alexander and Victoria Robinson having to run a giant cattle operation alongside protecting several protected species.

That includes the country's first 'sage-grouse conservation bank', which Ensign has promised to continue operating.

Robinson explained: "It's a statewide bank that, if there's any damage to, disturbance to, core habitat for greater sage-grouse, one option for mitigation would be to buy credits from the Pathfinder.

“[The property has] got a lot of sage grouse on it, a lot of antelope, pronghorn, deer and elk. It's teeming with life.”

The successful acquisition of the 916,000-acre Pathfinder Ranches increases the size of Ensign's land portfolio by around 50 per cent, which makes the company one of the 25 largest landowners in the US, according to the New York Post.

Robinson concluded: "We love land and water. We think it’s a good long-term investment, and we like the opportunities it affords us to be stewards over a piece of God’s creation.”