The mysterious buyer of a Wyoming ranch four times larger than New York City and bigger than the state of Rhode Island has been identified as a chief executive officer and local politician who already owns a million acres of land.

Christopher Robinson, the CEO of Ensign Group L.C., scooped up the massive 916,000-acre Pathfinder Ranches on behalf of the landholding company and closed the deal on Jan. 14, according to KPCW.

Robinson purchased the land for an undisclosed amount, only four years after he bought the neighboring Stone Ranch.

The massive property, which rolls across 1,431-square-miles, was listed over the summer by Swan Land Company broker Scott Williams for a whopping $79.5 million. New York City spans across 300.4 square miles, while Rhode Island spans 1,033.9.

Spreading across four counties in the Rocky Mountains, the Pathfinder Ranches is made up of four separate properties and encompasses over 1% of the land in the Cowboy State.

Actual deedage acreage of the historic purchase added up to 99,188 acres with the additional land coming from leases, according to the Cowboy State Daily.

The Park City, Utah resident is using the smaller ranch to bridge together the Pathfinder Ranches properties and create a self-sustainable livestock range.

“So, we’re kind of reuniting that, and we intend to, we’re operators,” Robinson told the outlet. “We’re not generally landlords. We’re going to, over time, grow into it, where we’re mostly running our own livestock on it.”

Robinson plans to work the property’s livestock to become self-sufficient rather than buying from outside the ranch.

The land was estimated to have a capacity of 90,444 Animal Unit Months, the amount of livestock a rangeland can support.

“With cattle prices as high as they are, we’re not going to be buying any mother cows to stock,” he said. “We keep a lot of heifers back anyway, so we’re going to grow internally.”

“If things get really tough, we’ll get rid of yearlings,” he said. “But we don’t get rid of mother cows. There have been droughts and things in the past, but we’ve got enough scale and flexibility that we can sell the yearlings.”

The Ensign Group, co-owned by Robinson and his siblings Alexander and Victoria Robinson, has acquired over 1 million acres of private and public lands throughout Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming under the Ensign Ranches moniker.

Before the massive purchase, the Robinson and Freed portfolio ranked at number 31 on Land Report Magazine’s Top 100 Landowner List.

Pathfinder Ranches may push the group’s portfolio to over 470,000 acres up 10 spots on the list and surpassing billionaire Jeff Bezos’ own impressive 462,000 acres, according to KPCW.

“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,” Robinson said.

Robinson, a graduate from the University of Utah, is one of the five members of the Summit County Council, a seat he has held since his election in 2008, according to the county’s website.

He has extensive experience in production agriculture, local government, mineral and resource development, public lands, renewable energy and conservation efforts.

In December, Robinson announced that he would not run for reelection.

Robinson is also on the board of several conservation and land groups in the Utah area.

The newly purchased land is also home to a diverse ecosystem of wildlife including housing the US’s first sage-grouse conservation bank.”

“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,” Robinson told the outlet. “[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 property, named after rolling foothills, high plains and broad river valleys, is a cowboy’s dream and one of Swan Land’s largest sales in Wyoming.

“This is what we specialize in are the large complicated transactions,” Williams told the Cowboy State Daily. “And the beauty of this is the buyers are excellent ranchers, but they’re also conservation-minded operators as well.

“That’s a plan that will take some time to realize,” Robinson said.

Several tax changes took effect in Rhode Island on Jan. 1, including a new tax on whole-home short-term rentals and inflation adjustments to the estate tax threshold, the state Division of Taxation announced this week.

The changes affect short-term rental operators, homebuyers, estate planning and several business tax credits.

Short-term rentals

Owners of short-term rentals face two changes this year. The local hotel tax that applies to all short-term rentals, including hotels, doubled from 1% to 2%.

A new 5% whole-home short-term rental tax now applies to any residential dwelling rented in its entirety. The tax covers houses, condos, mobile homes and other residential dwellings, including vacation rentals and those offered through online hosting platforms such as Airbnb and VRBO.

Real estate conveyance tax

The Tier 2 threshold for the real estate conveyance tax increased to $824,000, up from $800,000. The threshold will now be adjusted annually based on the Consumer Price Index. The Tier 2 rate of $3.75 per $500 applies to residential property sales exceeding the threshold, in addition to the Tier 1 rate.

Estate tax

The Rhode Island estate tax threshold rose to $1,838,056 for decedents dying in 2026, up from $1,802,431 in 2025. The estate tax credit amount increased to $87,940 from $85,375.

Interest rates

Interest on tax overpayments dropped to 7.25% from 8%. Rates on underpayments remain at 18% for trust fund taxes and 12% for all other taxes.

Business tax credits

Several business tax credits were eliminated for tax years beginning Jan. 1, 2026, including the Jobs Growth Act Tax Credit, Specialized Investment Tax Credit and Employment Tax Credit. The Research and Development Expense Credit carryforward period increased from seven years to 15 years.

For more information, contact the Division of Taxation at 401-574-8829 or visit tax.ri.gov.

Here are some of The Providence Journal’s most-read stories for the week of Jan. 11, supported by your subscriptions.

Here are the week’s top reads on providencejournal.com:

Cranston’s Garden City Center has announced two new restaurants that will be opening their doors this year and in 2027, and confirmed the sites for two other previously announced restaurants.

Each of the four restaurants will open its first Rhode Island locations at Garden City Center.

Journal food editor Gail Ciampa fills you in on the new lineup, where you’ll be able to get everything from noodles to bagels to authentic Mexican specialties and New Haven-style thin-crust pizzas.

Dining: Newport Creamery is gone. These restaurants are coming to Garden City.

University of Rhode Island men’s basketball coach Ryan “Archie” Miller was once again the highest-earning state employee of the year in 2025, marking his third year at the top and among familiar faces.

A list of the state’s top 200 earners provided by the Department of Administration tallied up employees’ wages in 2025, until Nov. 15. It had little variation from previous years and saw the same five highest earners as 2024.

Each employee earned more than $200,000, and as usual it was overwhelmingly full of URI administrators and coaches, along with state police, correctional officers and health care staff at state hospitals.  

Political Scene: Which RI state employees made the most money in 2025?

I asked Anna Gruttadauria if the terrible news of the Swiss nightclub fire had brought back memories of her daughter Pam.

Yes, said Anna – but really, she has thought of Pam every day since losing her almost 23 years ago in The Station nightclub fire in West Warwick. One hundred people died in that tragedy, and Pam Gruttadauria was the last. She persevered for three months at Massachusetts General Hospital before succumbing to her injuries at age 33.

The fire that killed 40 people at a club called Le Constellation at the Crans-Montana ski resort in Switzerland was remarkably similar to the Station fire. Both were caused by indoor pyrotechnics that ignited flammable materials inside.

Anna Gruttadauria and her husband, Joe, can’t help but ask themselves: How is it possible that the lessons of the Station fire were not learned?

Mark Patinkin: Swiss nightclub fire brings back memories for family of Station victim

Imagine a crowd of A-list celebrities descending on the village of Watch Hill in Westerly this summer to attend the wedding of mega celebrity Taylor Swift and football star Travis Kelce.

To Chuck O’Koomian, who owns Airline Express Limousine and Car Service with his wife, Ginny Cauley, it’s like a scene out of a horror movie.

“It’s going to be a logistical nightmare,” O’Koomian told The Providence Journal, as part of our survey of wedding vendors about what it would take for the Ocean State to host a wedding befitting the world’s most popular woman.

No date or location has been announced for the nuptials, but here’s what would be involved in getting a large celebrity crowd to a wedding held at Swift’s Watch Hill mansion, the nearby Ocean House or the Watch Hill Chapel, where former Miss Universe Olivia Culpo and football star Christian McCaffrey tied the knot in 2024.

Local news: Why a Taylor Swift wedding might shut down Westerly streets

Amy Henion doesn’t live in a tiny house, per se, but her apartment is about as close as you can get to that in Providence.