How 28 Americans amassed the greatest fortunes in US history, from railroads to tech
2026-01-15T15:14:00.175Z
- America has more billionaires than ever, led by Elon Musk, who’s estimated to be worth $716 billion.
- Figures such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were known as the richest men of their time.
- Today’s tech leaders are among the richest Americans in history — see the full list.
America has never had as many billionaires as it does now.
But how does the wealth of historic figures, such as the industrialists of the Gilded Agecompare to that of the richest people in 2025? That is to say: Who are the richest Americans of all time?
In many historic calculations of net worth, individual fortunes weren’t measured in isolation; instead, they were compared to the GDP of the US at the time. When the US economy was much smaller than it is today, the wealthiest families and individuals carried more weight in the economy than others during more prosperous times.
One of the richest Americans of all time is widely considered to be Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, whose wealth, at its peak in 1937, was equal to 1.5% of the country’s GDP. His estimated net worth would be around $499 billion today, when adjusted for inflation.
Elon Musk‘s current wealth, however, is understood to have now eclipsed that of Rockefeller’s. On January 14, Forbes estimated Musk’s fortune to be $716.7 billion.
To identify some of the richest Americans of all time, we consulted Forbes’ 2007 list of history’s wealthiest figures, based on estimates by economist Peter Bernstein. It calculated individuals’ wealth at their peak and compared it to the country’s GDP at the time to convert it to 2006 dollars. This was then adjusted to today’s dollars using the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator.
For living individuals, we cited estimated net worths reported by Forbes as of January 14.
While estimations of historic wealth may not be perfect, they help paint a picture of the level of wealth enjoyed by some of America’s most notable figures in business, and put it into context with today’s billionaires.
Here are 28 of the wealthiest Americans in history.
Andrew W. Mellon (1855-1937)
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Henry Ford (1863-1947)
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Jay Gould (1836-1892)
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Sam Walton (1918-1992)
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Marshall Field (1834-1906)
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Bill Gates
Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Michael Bloomberg
PAC NYC)
Alice Walton
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Alexander Turney Stewart (1803-1876)
The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images
Richard B. Mellon (1870-1933)
: HUM Images/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Michael Dell
Kike Rincon/Europa Press via Getty Images
Jim Walton
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Rob Walton
Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images
Steve Ballmer
Leon Bennett/Getty Images
Warren Buffett
Johannes EISELE / AFP via Getty Images
Stephen Girard (1750-1831)
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Jensen Huang
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
John Jacob Astor (1763-1848)
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Mark Zuckerberg
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Larry Ellison
Phillip Faraone/Getty Images
Jeff Bezos
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
Sergey Brin
Taylor Hill/FilmMagic
Larry Page
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877)
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
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John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Elon Musk
ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP/Getty Images
