By Cindy Gonzalez | Nebraska Examiner
Mark and Robyn Jones hope to invest and build ‘world-class cattle operation’
LINCOLN — In what appears to be a record-high buy for a Nebraska ranch, a roughly 40,000-acre Sandhills property with a history of prominent owners has shifted hands to a self-made billionaire insurance couple with a vision to build a “world-class cattle operation.”
Sold for $56 million, Lincoln County’s Pawnee Springs Ranch on Tuesday became the latest investment for Mark and Robyn Jones of Westlake, Texas. The high school sweethearts with a growing family of six kids and 20 grandchildren said they were seeking to diversify their business ventures.
Among other key holdings is part ownership of Goosehead Insurance, a public company the Joneses founded and grew, and a sprawling forested timberland ranch the pair bought a few years ago in Montana.
“What we wanted to do is have a sizable operation that focuses on actual agricultural production,” Mark Jones said in an interview days ago on his 64th birthday. “The Sandhills quickly jumped to the top of the list.”
Ranch features
Mark Johnson of Hall and Hall, which handles ag real estate in nine states, said Pawnee Springs Ranch “exemplifies the top qualities of a Nebraska Sandhills river ranch.”
Among its features:
- Nearly six miles of North Platte River frontage and nine center pivots covering about 1,700 irrigated acres.
- Calf backgrounding lots with concrete bunks, an indoor/outdoor arena.
- Balanced ecosystem with fertile river bottoms and native Sandhills rangeland providing habitat for deer, turkey and waterfowl.
Drawn by the property’s 2,500 mother cows, wildlife habitat, native range, river corridors and other ag benefits of the Ogallala Aquifer, Jones said the search led them to the Nebraska ranchland east of North Platte, whose name harkens to the area’s original Native American inhabitants.
Famed ownership roots
Hall and Hall, an ag focused multi-state real estate company based in Valentine, represented both the buyer and seller in the private listing deal, with local agent Mark Johnson serving as listing broker.
When Hall and Hall represented owners of the Nebraska Metzger ranch last year, the asking price for that 55,136-acre property was $50 million, an amount brokers described then as possible state record for a ranch sale. Johnson said the Metzger family ultimately decided to keep the Cherry County multigenerational ranch and work through the family dynamics.
Publicly available documents show that the Gottsch Feeding Corp. sold Pawnee Springs Land and Cattle LLC Tuesday for $56 million.
“It’s the largest total dollar ranch sale we’ve been able to determine from any records we could find,” Johnson said.
Among past owners of the Pawnee Springs property, which dates back to 1918, are names that ring familiar to Nebraska business and social circles. A former Nebraska governor, Keith Neville, was a previous owner. Construction titan Peter Kiewit bought the operation in 1949. He once told the North Platte Telegraph that the ranch derived its name from the natural springs that flowed.
The family behind Gottsch Feeding Corp. started leasing in 1985 and eventually purchased the ranch. In a statement regarding Tuesday’s sale, the Gottsches said “with a heavy heart” it agreed to sell a ranch that has been part of their family for 41 years.
“With three generations being a part of the spring brandings, summer grass and fall/winter backgroundings, Pawnee has shaped many lives,” the Gottsches said, offering special thanks to the Boeshart family caretakers and to neighbors who pitched in to help during branding season. “Those memories will always be cherished.”
The Gottsch statement said its family business footprint spans Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Texas, and its commitment stretches seven decades of “bridging the gap between ranching, high-tech feedlot management and sustainable farming.”
‘Long-term commitment’
Under the new ownership, Pawnee Springs for the most part will maintain current operations, said Ryan Langston, son-in-law to Jones and new CEO of the ranch. That includes raising calves from birth to weaning and returning them to grass as yearlings, as well as running ag pivots.
Three cowboys who now live and work on the ranch will stay, Langston said, and a new manager is to be hired to replace the current one who he said is moving on with the Gottsches.
“We are making a long-term commitment to the area,” Langston said. “We intend to hire local talent where possible, partner with our neighbors and make meaningful contributions to the local community.”
Known also for philanthropy, the Joneses in 2021 donated $101 million to the Montana State University nursing program — the home state of the scenic Flathead Ridge Ranch they bought that year. The couple told the university news service their intention was to help address one of the most defining challenges of the time: access to health care, particularly for residents of rural and remote areas.
The university at the time called it the largest ever donation to a college of nursing and the largest private gift in the state’s history.
Regarding the Nebraska purchase, Jones told the Examiner he and his wife hope it is the first of more acquisitions in the region. He said they were eager to invest in and build a “large-scale, truly world-class beef production operation … that in its most fundamental form is converting grass to protein.”
He sees the family’s focus being in Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming and Montana. The Pawnee Springs operation, he said, “will be a platform we can build onto.”
As a commercial enterprise, the Nebraska tract differs from the Jones’ 125,000-acre alpine ranch in Montana, which they refer to as a “family legacy investment.” Jones said he and his wife have tried to continue that property’s historical use by keeping the vast majority open to public recreation.
There, he said, “our objective is really to conserve the land. It’s been fairly heavily logged … So we’re very focused on nursing the forest back to optimal health.”
‘Jones has lost his mind’
The Joneses are not planning to live in Nebraska, but hope to be “active participants” in the local community.
Said Jones: “You should expect us to have a very real and ongoing presence and engagement with the community.”
The couple’s fortune is built upon a relationship that started as teens in Alberta, Canada. Married young and with their first few kids, Jones said he enrolled in college in the mid-1980s. In 1989, the family moved to Boston so he could attend Harvard Business School.
“Robyn was pregnant at that time with our fifth daughter. I believe that we still hold the record for the greatest number of kids for any Harvard Business School student,” Jones said with a chuckle.
He worked several years at Bain global management consulting firm. Robyn went from stay-at-home mom to work that led her to establish the insurance company the couple continued to grow together, after her husband made a job switch.
“When I told my partners (at Bain) I was leaving, they all laughed,” Jones recalled. “They thought, ‘This Jones has lost his mind.’ But you know, we’re very comfortable with people laughing at us.”
The Joneses remain chair and vice chair of Goosehead, a large national insurance broker that connects people with various home, auto, flood and other insurance carriers. Forbes estimates the couple’s combined net worth at $2 billion, and included Robyn on a 2025 list of America’s richest “self-made” women entrepreneurs, noting a net worth for her of $1.2 billion.
An appealing part of the Nebraska ranch purchase, said Jones, whose early jobs included laying pipe and driving a truck, was the opportunity to have their grandkids work there.
“We want our grandkids to learn and see the value of hard work,” he said.
He said his dealings with the sellers reflected an integrity he equates to the ranching operation.
“These are the kind of people we love to do business with,” he said.