Charleston Gazette – In six West Virginia counties, the top 10 landowners control at least 50 percent of the private land. Not one of the state’s 10 largest landowners is headquartered in West Virginia. Read
These findings in a new report from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and the American Friends Service Committee are instructive on the state’s current social and economic struggles, and for the future.
The new report “Who Owns West Virginia in the 21st Century?” documents changes since Tom Miller of the Huntington Herald-Dispatch did a similar study in 1974. Miller found that a couple dozen absentee landlords — mostly energy and land companies — owned or controlled two-thirds of the private land in the state then.
