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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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| Name | Edward Laurence Doheny |
| Address |
Los Angeles, California , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
August 10, 1856
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| Died | September 08, 1935
(79 years)
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| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Last Modifed | RBH
Feb 10, 2023 03:04pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | Edward Laurence Doheny (1856-1935), the entrepreneur who created Los Angeles� first oil boom and went on to become one of the wealthiest and most controversial men in America, was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, the son of an Irish laborer and gardener. His father, Patrick, came to the United States from Canada where he had migrated to escape the Great Famine. Bright and ambitious, young Edward set out to seek his fortune as a silver miner in the New Mexico Territory. When his prospecting ended in failure, he headed for Los Angeles to join a friend, Charles Canfield, who had managed to amass a small fortune in the mines. Doheny arrived in L.A. to find that Canfield had lost most of his money in land speculation.
The turning point in Doheny�s life is described by Margaret Leslie Davis in her 1998 biography of Doheny, "Dark Side of Fortune." Doheny was now living in a downtown L.A. boarding house with his ailing wife and frail daughter (who was to die at the age of 7), unemployed and delinquent in his hotel bill. "One spring day in 1892 he noticed a decrepit wagon lumbering past his hotel. The driver was hauling chunks of a greasy, brownish substance. What could that cargo be? Doheny had wondered. For no good reason, he rose from his seat and ran after the dray, calling out, �What are you hauling?� �It�s brea,� the driver replied, using the Spanish word for �pitch.� �Where does it come from?� �A hole out near Westlake Park.�" Intrigued, Doheny took a streetcar to the nearby park and found "a great hole oozing with gobs of the brea," which he learned was a "tarry exude (or exudate) that, when mixed with soil, could be used as a velvety-black combustible oil." A nearby ice factory used the oil for fuel. Realizing there was money to be made by finding the source of the brea and selling it as a cheap substitute for coal, Doheny convinced Canfield to invest $400 to lease a nearby three-lot parcel of land. Using picks and shovels, they began the back-breaking work of digging a well through the oil-soaked soil. When gas fumes made further manual digging impossible, they scraped together enough money to buy a drill and erect a derrick. On April 20, 1893, oil was discovered at a depth of about 200 feet. "This hole, at State and Patton streets, soon was transformed into the first free-flowing oil well ever drilled in the city of Los Angeles," writes Davis. Sale of the oil enabled the partners to buy more property and drill more successful wells throughout the L.A. area and in nearby cities.
An oil boom followed. "As news of oil strikes spread hundreds of money-hungry speculators and miners flocked to Los Angeles," writes Davis. "Homeowners sacrificed their yards and palm trees, and, in some cases, tore down their houses in order to make way for drilling rigs and oil derricks�.The landscape of Los Angeles was now dramatically altered. Black grimy drills ground noisily day and night, yielding for their owners thick muddy earth and black smoke�and ultimately thousands of gallons of oil." Historian Andrew Rolle said that 2,300 wells were drilled in Los Angeles within five years of the Doheny discovery. By 1899, in part through Doheny�s efforts, both the Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railways had converted all their locomotives from coal to oil burning engines. Other industries were undergoing a similar transformation.
Eager to grow his business, Doheny turned his attention to Mexico. Over time, his high-risk exploration proved successful, especially in the Tampico area near the Gulf of Mexico, which became known as the "Golden Lane." (By 1921, Doheny�s Mexican Petroleum Co. of California was "the largest and most lucrative concern in Mexico," writes biographer Davis.) When revolutionary forces in Mexico threatened his and other oil interests, he lobbied unsuccessfully for U.S. intervention, including an invasion of Mexico. At one point, he helped finance a private army to protect foreign-owned oil properties in the country. Doheny also extended his oil dominion to South America and the British Isles.
Doheny�s life was forever changed in 1924 when the U.S. government indicted him on conspiracy and bribery charges in connection with a $100,000 cash gift he had given three years earlier to Albert B. Fall, a longtime friend who was then Secretary of the Interior. Doheny insisted that the gift was a loan that Fall promised to re-pay and had nothing to do with a lucrative contract that Doheny�s company won a year later -- through competitive bidding -- to develop the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve in Kern County, Calif. Fall had approved the contract. In separate jury trials, Fall was convicted of taking a bribe, but Doheny was acquitted of offering one. Doheny was also acquitted of the conspiracy charge. "You can�t convict a million dollars in the United States," said a leading U.S. Senator, reflecting popular sentiment at the time. Doheny�s company, however, was stripped of its Elk Hills oil leases by a federal judge.
Despite the acquittals, Doheny�s name would forever be linked to the so-called "Teapot Dome Scandal," another bribery case involving Albert Fall and the awarding of oil leases at the Naval Petroleum Reserve at Teapot Dome, Wyoming. Fall�s co-defendant in this instance was oilman Harry F. Sinclair, who was later convicted on criminal contempt charges.
The lengthy legal ordeal took its toll on Doheny�s health and spirit (the final acquittal came in 1930 when he was 73 years old). A year earlier, he was devastated by the shooting death of his only son and heir, Edward L. (Ned) Doheny, Jr., apparently by a distraught friend who then took his own life. Doheny never recovered from the loss. He spent his last two years bedridden and under his wife�s care, dying at the age of 79.
The Doheny legacy in Southern California is substantial. Two libraries bear the family name: the Edward L. Doheny, Jr. Memorial Library at the University of Southern California, built as a memorial to Doheny�s slain son Ned; and the Edward L. Doheny Library at St. John�s Seminary in Camarillo, Calif., built in Doheny�s memory by his second wife, Carrie Estelle Doheny (1875-1958), herself a noted collector of rare books, 19th Century paintings, and Western Americana.
The Doheny name also lives on in the Estelle Doheny Eye Foundation, a research laboratory and eye bank established by Mrs. Doheny at St. Vincent�s Hospital in Los Angeles. The Dohenys also left behind two of the area�s landmark buildings � their elegant residence at 8 Chester Place in the West Adams District (later willed to the Catholic Church), and the 55-room Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, the "dream palace" built by Doheny in 1928 as a wedding present to his son (Greystone is now owned by the city of Beverly Hills). The Dohenys also financed construction of the magnificent St. Vincent�s Church at Adams Boulevard and Figueroa Street south of downtown Los Angeles.
-- Contributed by Albert Greenstein, 1999
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