Summit County councilmember's company acquires million-acre Wyoming ranch

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Summit County councilmember’s company acquires million-acre Wyoming ranch

KPCW | By Connor Thomas
Published January 16, 2026 at 4:28 PM MST


Swan Land Company
Pathfinder Ranches spans 916,000 acres in east central Wyoming.

The Pathfinder Ranches property is larger than Rhode Island.

The company Summit County Councilmember Chris Robinson owns with his siblings Alexander and Victoria, The Ensign Group, L.C., closed on Pathfinder Ranches in Wyoming Jan. 14.

Pathfinder spans 916,000 acres and four counties in east central Wyoming. According to the broker, that’s 1% of Wyoming’s land mass and almost the size of Delaware.

Robinson said the property was assembled from a dozen ranches over the years. Ensign already held the 86,000-acre Stone Ranch in the middle of its eastern and western arms.

“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,” he told KPCW Jan. 16. “It's now one big landscape.”


Swan Land Company
John C. Frémont was called "The Pathfinder" for his exploits in the American West.

{snip}

Connor Thomas
KPCW Reporter

[2naSalit]

1. Yikes.

[ratchiweenie]

2. So they plan to graze cattle on this property?

It’s a 50% expansion of Ensign’s grazing capacity, probably the family company’s largest single expansion, Robinson said. To him, it’s about both business and conservation.

In the arid west, grazing cattle is the opposite of "conservation".