As a captain in the United States Army, he supported a military invasion of Mexico in 1916 as a means of ending Pancho Villa's raids.

They had four children: a son, Jack Morgan Fall, and daughters Alexina Chase, Caroline Everhart and Jouett Elliott.

On February 1, 1896, Fountain and his eight-year-old son, Henry, disappeared near White Sands on the way from Fall's Three Rivers Ranch north of Tularosa to their home in Mesilla.

Evidence at the trial suggested Lee was involved in Fountain's murder and disappearance, but investigators had to deal with a corrupt court system and Fall's legal skill.

[2] In 1908, Fall successfully defended Jesse Wayne Brazel, the accused killer of former Sheriff Pat Garrett.

This controversy made Fall a target of the local Republican Party, as they believed he had not contributed sufficiently to their efforts to secure New Mexico's statehood, and was not worthy of their nomination.

[5] In the general election he overcame a bitter challenge from Democrat William B. Walton,[6] even though Fall never made a campaign speech.

[7] Some commentators suggest that it was sympathy for Fall's tragic loss of his two children in the flu pandemic that won him the election.

[8] In the Senate, Fall served as chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Commerce and Labor, was noted for his support of the suffrage movement and his extreme isolationist tendencies when the U.S. entered World War I.

[9] In the Senate, Fall become close friends with the people who would later make up the infamous Ohio Gang, which secured him a cabinet position in Warren G. Harding's administration in March 1921.

Soon after his appointment, Harding convinced Edwin Denby, the Secretary of the Navy, that Fall's department should take over responsibility for the Naval Reserves at both Elk Hills and Buena Vista, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

This last setting became the namesake of the scandal to erupt in April 1922, when The Wall Street Journal reported that Secretary Fall had decided that two of his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair (Mammoth Oil Corporation) and Edward L. Doheny (Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company), should be given leases to drill in parts of these Naval Reserves without open bidding.

The investigation found Fall guilty of bribery and conspiracy on October 24, 1929 (exactly the same day as the Black Thursday[10]) as a result of $385,000 having been paid to him by Edward L. Doheny.