“I consider the whole planet my home,” the founder of CNN and one-time largest private landowner in the US once told AD. But where does Ted Turner live now that other tycoons have bought up enough acreage to surpass his record?
Turner, who is now in his 80s, is still one of the country’s top landowners, with roughly 2 million acres to his name, the majority of which is found on 13 sprawling ranches that together host the largest privately managed bison herd in the country, numbering over 45,000, according to his official website.
Per CNN, Turner currently lives on one of his Montana ranches, where he spends his downtime fishing and generally enjoying the great outdoors, despite being diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia, a neurodegenerative disease, in 2018.
“Despite the health challenges it presents, Ted continues to remain resilient and engaged in his professional and personal endeavors,” Turner Enterprises chief communications officer Phillip Evans said in January 2025.
Read on for a deep dive on that property and Turner’s other residences.
South Carolina properties
In 1978, the CNN founder bought Hope Plantation, a roughly 5,000-acre South Carolina property that dates back to 1799. Turner continued to increase his footprint in the state the following year with the purchase of St. Phillips Island, a 4,600-acre barrier island off the state’s coast. Other than two homes (a five-bedroom house and a manager’s cottage) that the billionaire built there, St. Phillips remains largely undeveloped. A few years later, in 1982, Turner paid $2.9 million for a 5,800-acre hunting preserve in the state, Kinloch Plantation, equipped with a 1920s 15-room hunting lodge. He later transferred ownership to his second wife, Jane Smith Turner; the pair were married from 1965 until 1988.
Turner maintained Hope Plantation until 2014, when he sold it for $15 million. He sold the island, a designated National Natural Landmark, to the state of South Carolina in 2017 for $4.9 million. Kinloch Plantation most recently changed hands in 2025 for $18 million.
Florida residence
Turner then scooped up a property near Tallahassee, Florida, in 1985. Inspired by stories of King Arthur, he named the land Avalon, after the mystical island where the sword of Excalibur was forged. “It was about 8,000 acres when I bought it, and it was a bit of a stretch for me,” Turner told Architectural Digest during a 2004 tour of the property, a wild quail hunting site that was a cotton plantation in the 19th century. By that time, the property had grown by 25,000 acres. “I acquired more land because I required more land—I wanted it. I never like to buy anything except land. It’s the only thing that lasts,” Turner told AD. Avalon’s main house is a 15,000-square-foot Colonial Revival that was built in 1938, the same year that Turner was born. In 1991, he married actor Jane Fonda on the property (they divorced in 2001).
As of 2023, Turner still owned the property.
Montana ranches
Turner bought his first ranch, Montana’s 22,000-acre Bar None Ranch, in 1987. Two years later, he spent $21 million on the 113,000-acre Flying D Ranch, also in Montana; Turner and Fonda built a house together there. “When I was told that a larger ranch was coming on the market, I was interested. Jane and I were still getting used to the scale of the Bar None when I told her that now I was going to look into a property that was many times larger,” Turner wrote in his 2008 memoir, Call Me Ted. “Part of my desire to own this land was to make sure that it was never developed. Conserving this property for future generations seemed like the right thing to do, especially with so much development happening in that part of the country.”
The news titan later added the state’s Snowcrest Ranch, spanning over 13,000 acres, to his portfolio. A 2011 interview with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle described Turner’s residence on that property, featuring a rock fireplace crowned by a 19th-century Albert Bierstadt western landscape painting and picture windows showing off the Montana hills. “I came out to Montana mainly to go fishing,” Turner told the outlet. “I bought a couple of the first places for fishing, and then I started buying for the bison and all the other wildlife, too.… The other thing I like to do is ride horses. This is a beautiful place to ride horseback.”
Turner has since sold Bar None, but he maintains Flying D and Snowcrest Ranch, one of which—likely the latter, per Turner’s 2011 Bozeman Daily Chronicle interview—serves as his current residence.
Nebraska land
Starting in the mid-’90s, Turner scooped up almost half a million acres of ranch land in Nebraska, becoming the state’s largest landowner. Even in recent years, Turner or his representatives have continued to acquire Nebraska land; between 2018 and 2020, they reportedly spent $13.5 million on an additional 18,000 acres there. According to Turner’s website, he currently owns five ranches in the Cornhusker State. It’s unclear if he has ever maintained a personal residence on any of these ranches, however.
Vermejo Park Ranch
In 1996, Turner bought Vermejo Park Ranch, a massive New Mexico property spanning 591,000 acres. “As far as I know,” Turner told AD in 2005, “Vermejo is the largest contiguous piece of private land in the United States.” Unsurprisingly, considering its size, the ranch encompasses a variety of landscapes, from 60,000 acres of prairie to soaring, snowcapped mountains.
The 25,000-square-foot main house, Casa Grande, was once Turner’s private residence but is now open to guest stays, as are five cottages, a lakeside cabin, an eight-bedroom fishing lodge, and a 10-bedroom home complete with a spa. Fonda, who was married to Turner when he picked up the massive property, helped decorate the interiors. Turner still owns this ranch.
Armendaris Ranch and Ladder Ranch
Turner purchased two other New Mexico ranches, Ladder Ranch and Armendaris Ranch, in the ’90s as well. When visiting Armendaris Ranch, Turner and his friends initially stayed in an old cowboy bunkhouse on the property, but in 2006, he decided to build a four-bedroom hacienda-style house on the land. Located in the desert, the dwelling features views of the Fra Cristobal Mountains. (AD toured the place two years later, in 2008.) Today, the property can be booked for private stays.
Ladder Ranch has a four-bedroom, four-bathroom residence that once served as Turner’s private home but is now bookable to visitors. In total, Turner’s three New Mexico properties span over a million acres and are used for hunting, fishing, and bison ranching.
Argentina retreats
Seeking somewhere to go fly-fishing in winter, Turner next decided to invest in properties in Argentina’s Patagonia region. “In ’97, I purchased a nine-thousand-acre ranch in Patagonia named La Primavera, and in 2000, a 93,000-acre property named Collon Cura. I also bought a 24,000-acre ranch and fishing lodge on the island of Tierra del Fuego. These three properties all feature great fly-fishing,” the conservationist wrote in 2008. It is unclear if he still maintains these properties.
Nonami Plantation
The media tycoon also owns an 8,800-acre property near Albany, Georgia, called Nonami Plantation. Turner bought the land in 2010, but his ties to it go much deeper: He had been embarking on quail hunts at Nonami for 30 years before buying it from the previous owner. As of 2024, he still maintains the property, which houses a stately white horse barn in addition to its main house and thousands of acres of quail-laden forest and fields.
