The federal government owns approximately 640 million acres of the 2.4 billion acres that constitute the United States of America. You might be astonished to know that less than one half of that total consists of our invaluable Great National Park system, our U.S. protected forest lands, and our protected grasslands. Moreover, the federal government's holdings are almost entirely in twelve western states, where they create weird real estate markets, for reasons that can only be characterized as an historical accident. The map below shows federally owned land in various colors other than red (Indian reservations) and grey (other land):
The enormous amounts of twelve western states that are federally owned are revealed again by this chart:
