I remember growing up in Texas reading somewhere between 80-95 percent of all land in Texas is privately owned in various civics texts, my libertarian civics teacher was proud of this for some reason. It’s an exceptionally high percentage compared to the states to west of Texas. It’s a Texas issue dating back to Spanish rule and continued under successive governments. I don’t think this happened to other western states formerly under Spanish rule.

The amount of public land sort of follows when states were admitted to the union. At a certain point we saw what happened to the East and decided not to let it keep happening. Thanks in large part to early conservationists like Gifford Pinochet and Teddy Roosevelt