Edward L. Doheny

Who was Edward L. Doheny?

Edward Laurence Doheny was a U.S. oil tycoon, who in 1892 drilled the first successful oil well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field, setting off the petroleum boom in Southern California and making a fortune in 1902 when he sold his properties. He then began highly profitable oil operations in Tampico, Mexico. He expanded operations during the Mexican revolution and opened large new oil fields in Mexico's "golden lane" inland from Tampico. His holdings became the Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company, one of the largest oil companies in the world in the 1920s.

In the 1920s, Doheny was implicated in the Teapot Dome Scandal and was accused of offering a $100,000 bribe to Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall. He was twice acquitted of offering the bribe but Fall was convicted of accepting it. Doheny and his second wife and widow, Carrie Estelle, were noted philanthropists in Los Angeles, especially regarding Catholic schools and charities. The character J. Arnold Ross in Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! is loosely based on Doheny.