Edward L.
Doheny
|
"Doheny’s
story is one of enigmatic fate – poverty and wealth, renown and
disgrace, fortune and tragedy – a tale of the skeleton, la calavera of
Mexican lore, ever present at the banquet table, a reminder that fortune has
a dark, hidden side."
-- Biographer Margaret Leslie Davis in "Dark Side of Fortune" |
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 Doheny’s 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 Doheny’s 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
