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Who really said it

Buy land, they're not making it anymore

Not Will Rogers — an anonymous quip from 1905 Unknown (anonymous, by 1905) Earliest documented in a Kansas newspaper, 13 October 1905 · creator unrecorded
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Nobody has produced a Will Rogers text containing this line. Quote Investigator ↗ found the earliest match in the McCracken Enterprise of McCracken, Kansas on 13 October 1905, where an unnamed “old gentleman” delivers it — the creator is anonymous. Rogers did write something adjacent in 1930, and the first credit to him is a 1954 real-estate advertisement.

Last verified 17 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Buy land, they're not making it anymore” Anonymous (American quip documented 13 October 1905); popularly but wrongly credited to Will Rogers, and just as often to Mark Twain. Source: Quote Investigator.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Will Rogers. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of wisdom and work. Theme: "Buy land, they're not making it anymore". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Buy land, they're not making it anymore". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What the record shows

Popularly credited
Will Rogers — and, just as often, Mark Twain
Earliest documented match
McCracken Enterprise (McCracken, Kansas), 13 October 1905
Wording then
“God almighty isn’t making any more land, but he’s makin babies every mornin’”
First credited to Rogers
Miami Herald real-estate advertisement, 21 February 1954

An old gentleman the other day in advising a friend to buy land, said, God almighty isn't making any more land, but he's makin babies every mornin'. — McCracken Enterprise, Kansas, 13 October 1905

This is the earliest appearance Quote Investigator located, and the speaker is anonymous even here — an unnamed “old gentleman” quoted secondhand. A week later the same trail carries it as the saying of an unnamed “old Irishman.” The polished eight-word form the internet shares today has no identified author at all.

Quote Investigator: tracing the buy-land quip

How we verified this

  • Quote Investigator ↗ found the earliest match in the McCracken Enterprise of McCracken, Kansas, 13 October 1905, spoken by an unnamed “old gentleman”; its timeline then tracks the joke through an “old Irishman” later in 1905, a Reverend C. L. Davis in 1916 and an unnamed clergyman in 1922 — all anonymous or non-famous speakers.
  • Independently, Barry Popik ↗ records a 1909 Salt Lake Telegram version — “ain’t nobody makin’ no more land” — and concludes that real-estate companies popularised the Will Rogers authorship in advertisements during the 1960s and 1970s.
  • What Rogers actually published is a different sentence. In a column dated 13 April 1930, quoted by Quote Investigator ↗, he wrote that he had put his money into ocean frontage “for the sole reason that there was only so much of it and no more, and that they wasent making any more.” Same logic, different subject, and twenty-five years after the joke was already circulating.
  • Wikiquote ↗ does list “Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff” on its Rogers page, but under the heading “As quoted in …” and sourced only to Peter M. Wolf’s Land in America — a book catalogued as published in 1981 ↗. A second variant is marked “Unsourced.”

The exact popular wording has no identifiable author and no first-publication anchor — it is an anonymous American saying whose earliest documented ancestor is a 1905 Kansas newspaper paragraph, itself quoting an unnamed speaker. With no authored source work to date, no copyright status can responsibly be asserted for the line as it circulates today.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Two famous names, neither of them the source

America’s two most quotable humorists both get the credit for this one, and the record supports neither.

Will Rogers misattributed

The quip was already in print in 1905, when Rogers was an unknown rope-trick performer. His nearest documented remark — a column of 13 April 1930 — is about ocean frontage, not land, and does not contain the phrase “buy land.” Quote Investigator ↗ dates the first credit to Rogers to a Miami Herald real-estate advertisement of 21 February 1954, years after his death in 1935.

Mark Twain misattributed

Quote Investigator ↗ states it has found no substantive evidence that Twain, who died in 1910, ever used the quip; the Twain credit surfaces only in 1971. The line appears in no section of Wikiquote’s Mark Twain page ↗.

Peter M. Wolf, Land in America (1981) late source

Wikiquote ↗ files the line under “As quoted in …” and cites only this book, whose catalogue record ↗ confirms a 1981 publication date. That is a modern secondary book repeating the attribution, not a text written by Rogers; Wikiquote marks a second variant simply “Unsourced.”

The real story: an anonymous American joke documented in a small Kansas newspaper on 13 October 1905 ↗, later handed to Will Rogers by real-estate advertising and to Mark Twain by 1971.

Context

Why it landed on Will Rogers

The line is a real-estate salesman’s dream: a complete investment thesis in eight words, delivered as a joke. It needed a folksy American voice to carry it, and Will Rogers — cowboy, columnist, the humorist the whole country read — was the obvious fit. Barry Popik notes that real-estate companies popularised the Rogers authorship in advertisements ↗ through the 1960s and 1970s.

But the paper trail runs the other way. Quote Investigator’s timeline ↗ shows the gag passing through an anonymous “old gentleman” in 1905, an “old Irishman” a week later, a Reverend C. L. Davis in 1916 and an unnamed clergyman in 1922 — all before Rogers wrote a word on the subject. It is a folk joke that kept borrowing a speaker until it found one famous enough to stick.

A real-estate ad in 1954 handed the line to a man who had been dead since 1935.

Read the full story

What Rogers actually wrote, in a column dated 13 April 1930, was about ocean frontage rather than land: he had been putting his money into it “for the sole reason that there was only so much of it and no more, and that they wasent making any more.” It is the same reasoning, in his own spelling — but it is not the eight-word quip, and it arrived twenty-five years after the joke was already in print.

Mark Twain gets the credit at least as often. That attribution is later still: Quote Investigator ↗ dates it to 1971, when a London Evening Standard columnist wrote “Mark Twain said, ‘Buy land, they’ve stopped making it’” — and Twain had died in 1910. The quote does not appear anywhere on Wikiquote’s Mark Twain page ↗, in any section.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Work

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: Buy Land; They're Not Making It Anymorequoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the 1905 anonymous first match, the full attribution timeline, Rogers’s actual 1930 wording, and the 1971 Twain credit.
Barry Popik: “Buy land — they ain't making any more of it”barrypopik.com

Independent etymological research: a 1909 Salt Lake Telegram partial match, and how real-estate advertising built the Will Rogers credit.
Wikiquote: Will Rogersen.wikiquote.org

Lists the line under “As quoted in …” — sourced only to a 1981 book, with a second variant marked unsourced.
Wikiquote: Mark Twainen.wikiquote.org

The rival attribution, checked: the quote appears in no section of Twain’s Wikiquote page, including Disputed and Misattributed.
Peter M. Wolf, Land in America (1981)openlibrary.org

Catalogue record for the only work Wikiquote cites for the Rogers version — published in 1981, decades after his death.
Will Rogersen.wikipedia.org

Biography and dates for the man the line is pinned on, including his 1922–1935 syndicated newspaper column.

Credited, but not the source

About Will Rogers

Will Rogers

1879–1935 · American humorist, newspaper columnist & film actor

Will Rogers was born on 4 November 1879 near Oologah in Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma, and died in a plane crash on 15 August 1935. A vaudeville rope-trick artist turned film star and “humorous social commentator,” he wrote a syndicated newspaper column from 1922 until his death and produced more than four thousand syndicated pieces — a body of homespun one-liners so large and so quotable that unattributed American folk wit tends to drift onto his name. This is one that drifted: the joke was in print while Rogers was still working the vaudeville circuit.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Garson O’Toole (Gregory F. Sullivan), “Quip Origin: Buy Land; They’re Not Making It Anymore,” Quote Investigator, October 29, 2024, citing the McCracken Enterprise (McCracken, Kansas), October 13, 1905.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Buy land, they're not making it anymore’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/buy-land-theyre-not-making-it-anymore/

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