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Edward L. Doheny

Edward Laurence Doheny (August 10, 1856 - September 8, 1935) was an American oil tycoon.

Doheny was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. His family history reaches back to Ireland when his family fled in the wake of the Great Famine. He came to Los Angeles looking for opportunity as his previous attempts at striking it rich had failed. While in Los Angeles, Doheny found out that there was pitch hidden beneath the soil. Along with his friend Charles Canfield, who made some money from the mining industry, he decided to dig for the pitch. The pitch, or brea in Spanish, could be mixed with soil to form oil. At first, they dug by hand to find the source of the brea, but later turned to drills to reach its depths. By the spring of 1903, they struck the brea and, in so doing, struck it big. They made a fortune by digging around the area and selling the oil to nearby factories.

Doheny would later form the PanAmerican Petroleum and Transport Company. The company owned 600,000 acres (2400 km²) of land in Mexico worth about $50 million. It would later become the Mexican Petroleum Company with an additional 800,000 acres (3200 km²) in Mexico in October 1919. He would later step down from chairmanship and become head of Pan American Western Petroleum Company.

Doheny's reputation, is however, marred by a "gift" he made to the Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall. This payment of $100,000 was made at the same time Doheny was given a lease to the oil feeds at Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve. The lease was for 32,000 acres (130 km²) of government owned land near Taft, CA. Coming on the heels of Fall's lease of Teapot Dome, this landed Doheny in court. But in March 1930, he was cleared of all charges, though Fall did not bear the same fate.

Doheny is also famous for another of his gifts -- the wedding gift of Greystone Mansion to his son, Edward (Ned) L. Doheny, Jr. He built the $4,000,000 house in 1928. Doheny, Sr, himself, had a huge house. It was a mansion in the Historical West Adams district of Los Angeles and in Chester Place, a gated community of Victorian mansions which Doheny developed. It was built in 1899 in the French Gothic architecture. The 3-story, 22-room house was damaged in the 1933 earthquake but was fixed up and is now part of Mount St. Mary's College's campus.

Doheny poses with his lawyer Frank J. Hogan in this 1924 photo

Doheny also made his mark in the 1916 Presidential election by wagering on Woodrow Wilson to be the victor. A common practice at the time, this bet made him $500,000 richer.

However, Doheny did some good work as when he took his yacht, the Casiana (named after his first oil well to spring oil, Casiana No. 7), to Martinique to pick up a friend's brother who worked as a farmer on the island and who was seriously ill. Doheny brought him back to New York; the steam yacht was able to make the trip in only 5 days.

Doheny had also contributed money to some foundations. He helped fund the construction of St. Vincent de Paul Church. So too did he donate $1.1 million in 1932 to USC to build the Edward L. Doheny, Jr. Memorial Library.[1] His wife, Carrie Estelle Doheny also donated her rare book collection St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, CA.

He died on September 8, 1935 from old age. His funeral was in St. Vincent's Church in Los Angeles, a church that he built. Doheny Drive in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills is named after him.

The Doheny Mansion, just south of Downtown Los Angeles, is currently the centerpiece of the Mount St. Mary's College Doheny Campus.

• Doheny is the maternal grandfather of science fiction author, Larry Niven.
• The Doheny family also owned a great deal of coastal land in Dana Point, CA which was donated for Doheny State Beach and donated the funds for the construction of the original site of St. Edward the Confessor Roman Catholic Church. The Church has since moved a bluff-top location over looking Doheny State Beach. The original building is now home to San Felipe de Jesus Roman Catholic Church.
• The Doheny Estate has donated money for the construction of buildings and residence halls to Loyola Marymount University and the land for one of the campuses of Mount Saint Mary's College in Los Angeles.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Edward L. Doheny

• History of Doheny
• Edward L. Doheny, Jr. Memorial Library at USC and [2]
• Doheny, Jr.'s killing
• Family retreat

• Margaret Leslie Davis. Dark Side of Fortune: Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L. Doheny. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. ISBN 0-520-22909-6
• Martin R. Ansell. Oil Baron of the Southwest. Ohio State University Press, 1998.