Before Los Angeles was known for making movies, it was known for making something else; oil.

Believe it or not, L.A. used to be a small seaside town until the late 1800s. In 1892, Edward L. Doheny discovered the first successful oil well near present-day Dodger Stadium. The Los Angeles Oil Field became California’s top-producing oil field and in 1901, there were 200 separate oil companies active there.

Doheny’s success set off a petroleum boom in Southern California and made him a fortune when, in 1902, he sold his properties.

He then began highly profitable oil operations in Tampico, Mexico’s “golden belt,” drilling the first well in the nation in 1901. He expanded operations during the Mexican Revolution and opened large new oil fields in Lake Maracaibo (Venezuela). His holdings developed as 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 accused of offering a $100,000 bribe to United States Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall. Doheny 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, churches, and charities.

Over time, though, the city was being built on top of these oil fields. While Los Angeles doesn’t look like the oil giant it once was, there are still many active drill sites all over the city. These oil rigs are hidden in plain view on high school campuses, attached to shopping malls, and located inside buildings that otherwise look like regular office buildings.

Notes:

<1> Dr. Adnan Albarode, The Arab Petroleum Engineering, https://www.facebook.com/groups/3115499148764319/permalink/3677157015931860/

<2> “Edward L. Doheny,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_L._Doheny