Mapped: The Wealthiest Person in Every U.S. State in 2020

The Wealthiest Person in Every U.S. State

Check out the latest 2023 update of the wealthiest person in every U.S. state.

There are different degrees of wealth that exist, even among the richest in America.

For example, a heavy-hitting millionaire might have the most impressive fortune in his or her home state — but venture a few miles across the state border, and suddenly they become a small fish in a much bigger pond.

Today’s map comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it shows the incredible variance in the biggest fortunes on a state-by-state basis.

The Rich List, by State

Below is the full list containing the wealthiest person in every U.S. state, based on calculations by Forbes in early March 2020.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tops the list with a net worth of $117.1 billion in the state of Washington — meanwhile, the smallest fortune on the list is located in Alaska at just $0.3 billion.

Rank	Person	State	Net Worth ($B)
#1	Jeff Bezos	Washington	$117.1
#2	Warren Buffett	Nebraska	$89.6
#3	Mark Zuckerberg	California	$81.9
#4	Michael Bloomberg	New York	$58.4
#5	Jim Walton	Arkansas	$51.9
#6	Alice Walton	Texas	$51.7
#7	Charles Koch	Kansas	$42.8
#8	Sheldon Adelson	Nevada	$41.4
#9	Phil Knight and family	Oregon	$40.0
#10	Jacqueline Mars	Virginia	$30.2
#11	John Mars	Wyoming	$30.2
#12	Ray Dalio	Connecticut	$18.7
#13	Thomas Peterffy	Florida	$17.6
#14	Abigail Johnson	Massachusetts	$16.0
#15	Pierre Omidyar	Hawaii	$13.2
#16	Ken Griffin	Illinois	$13.1
#17	Thomas Frist Jr and family	Tennessee	$13.0
#18	John Menard Jr	Wisconsin	$11.7
#19	Philip Anschutz	Colorado	$11.5
#20	Carl Cook	Indiana	$10.4
#21	Jim Kennedy	Georgia	$9.9
#22	Harold Hamm & family	Oklahoma	$9.7
#23	James Goodnight	North Carolina	$8.0
#24	Victoria Mars	Pennsylvania	$7.5
#25	Pauline MacMillan Keinath	Missouri	$6.9
#26	Dennis Washington	Montana	$6.7
#27	Daniel Gilbert	Michigan	$6.5
#28	Ernest Garcia II	Arizona	$6.2
#29	John Overdeck	New Jersey	$6.1
#30	Ted Lerner and family	Maryland	$5.5
#31	Harry Stine	Iowa	$5.4
#32	Tamara Gustavson	Kentucky	$5.0
#33	Les Wexner and family	Ohio	$4.5
#34	Frank VanderSloot	Idaho	$3.7
#35	Gayle Benson	Louisiana	$3.1
#36	Glen Taylor	Minnesota	$2.8
#37	T. Denny Sanford	South Dakota	$2.4
#38	Susan Alfond	Maine	$1.9
#39	Anita Zucker	South Carolina	$1.9
#40	Jonathan Nelson	Rhode Island	$1.8
#41	Gail Miller	Utah	$1.6
#42	Jim Justice II	West Virginia	$1.5
#43	James and Thomas Duff	Mississippi	$1.4
#44	Gary Tharaldson	North Dakota	$1.0
#45	Jimmy Rane	Alabama	$0.9
#46	Elizabeth Snyder and Robert Gore	Delaware	$0.9
#47	Andrea Reimann-Ciardelli	New Hampshire	$0.7
#48	Mack C. Chase	New Mexico	$0.7
#49	John Abele	Vermont	$0.6
#50	Leonard Hyde, Jonathan Rubini and Families	Alaska	$0.3

While all of the names above are considered extraordinarily wealthy in their home states, there is still a magnitude of difference involved. The low end of the list ($0.3 billion) would need to multiply their fortune by 390 times to get up to the $117.1 billion Bezos level.

To put this another way, the same degree of difference exists between the median household wealth in the U.S. (~$100,000) and a multi-millionaire with $39 million to their name.

Rising and Falling Fortunes

The above figures were obtained prior to the COVID-19 market crash, which will surely impact the size of some of the fortunes listed here.

Who will be most and least impacted by the recent stock market turmoil?

Even though Jeff Bezos has most of his wealth tied up in Amazon stock, so far it has been relatively unaffected by the volatility. With more people staying home because of social distancing, orders on online platforms such as Amazon have exploded.

Similarly to Amazon, the heirs of the Walmart fortune in the Walton family — including Jim Walton, Alice Walton, and Rob Walton — are also seeing Walmart’s stock price hold relatively steady in the face of volatility. In fact, some analysts consider Walmart to be the ultimate “recession-proof” stock, as consumers flock to discount goods in poor economic times.

Warren Buffett is also an interesting case. Though the stock market has certainly disrupted the real-time value of his fortune, that’s not the game that Warren Buffett plays. In fact, he is known for waiting for times of crisis to deploy his cash, and has a significant stockpile of money ready for just this kind of situation.

Billionaires like Sheldon Adelson in Nevada or Philip Anschutz of Colorado might be singing a different tune than some of the other above magnates. Adelson, for example, owns a good chunk of the Las Vegas Strip, as well as casinos and hotels in Singapore and Macao. Unfortunately, tourism-related businesses are some of the hardest hit in the COVID-19 crash.

Meanwhile, Anschutz owns the Coachella Music Festival and stakes in many professional sports teams (LA Lakers, LA Kings, and multiple MLS teams), which have all been impacted by the cancellation of big events and gatherings throughout the country. Like many others, Anschutz is probably itching for things to get back to normal.