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).

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 and his second wife and widow, Margaret McFadden, were noted philanthropists in Los Angeles, especially regarding Catholic schools, churches and charities.

[4] As a young fellow, Doheny was known to have consumed alcohol before attending the Peachtree Dance with a local girl he had been courting.

In Kingston, he met two men who later played important roles in his life: Albert Fall, the future Secretary of the Interior, and Charles A. Canfield, who became his business partner.

[8] In 1883, in the Black Mountains town of Kingston in the New Mexico Territory, Doheny met and married his first wife, Carrie Louella Wilkins, on August 7.

[9] In the Spring of 1891, Doheny left New Mexico and moved to Los Angeles, California, attracted by Canfield's success in real estate there.

Canfield had previously left New Mexico with $110,000 in cash from his Comstock Mine venture, which he parlayed into extensive real estate holdings during the Los Angeles boom of the later 1880s.

With the collapse of the speculative fever, Canfield lost his wealth and land holdings and, by the time Doheny arrived in Los Angeles in 1891, he was deeply in debt.

[10] The two men briefly tried prospecting in the San Diego County area of Southern California, forming the Pacific Gold and Silver Extracting Company there—but without achieving success, they soon returned to Los Angeles.

[14] While in Los Angeles, Doheny found out that there were local reserves of natural asphalt, which in places came to the surface—notably at the La Brea Tar Pits.

(The discovery of this well appears in John Jakes's novel California Gold,—as do Doheny and Canfield, as partners with the novel's fictional protagonist, Mack Chance.)

He expanded operations during the Mexican Revolution, and opened large new oil fields in Mexico's "golden belt" inland from Tampico.

Fall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, leased the oil field at Elk Hills, California, to the Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company.

He made the "gift" of $100,000 in connection with obtaining a lease of 32,000 acres (13,000 ha) of government-owned land used for the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve near Taft, California.

[28] At the end of 1925, in order to exploit the oilfields in Lake Maracaibo Pan American Western gained control of Lago Petroleum Corporation from C. Ledyard Blair's Blair & Co.[29] The transaction became the subject of a stockholder action in 1933, which alleged that the bankers, who were represented on the Pan American board, conspired to make excessive profits.

[33] When a second criminal trial for bribery began to loom for Doheny and Fall in 1929, the pressure on all parties reached a breaking point.

[36] Raymond Chandler, a former oil man, included a thinly veiled account of this event in one chapter of his novel The High Window, presenting it as a bygone, hushed-up case.

[38] When she realized her husband needed an undisturbed home away for a while after the Teapot Dome travails and Ned's death, Carrie Estelle asked architect Wallace Neff to design and build the Ferndale Ranch complex on their Ojai, California property.

[39] Hundreds of workers completed the 9,000 square feet (840 m2) house in less than six weeks, including Neff's blueprints, by working day and night.

[33][40] Edward L. Doheny died at his Beverly Hills townhouse on September 8, 1935, of natural causes, a month after his seventy-ninth birthday.

[43] It was part of Chester Place, a gated community of Victorian mansions, and by his death in 1935, Doheny ended up owning most of the houses, as well as the street.

It is within Mount Saint Mary's University's Doheny campus, where it houses college departments, runs docent tours, and hosts chamber music concerts by The Da Camera Society.

The Doheny Estate has donated money to Loyola Marymount University for the construction of buildings and residence halls, and the land for one of the campuses of Mount St. Mary's College south of downtown Los Angeles.

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 City; the steam yacht made the trip in only five days.

On her death, she left antiquities and funds to St. John's (Roman Catholic) Seminary located in Camarillo, in Ventura County.

[citation needed] In 1954, Estelle Doheny provided funds and "a quantity of her precious collections in the library building" at St. Mary's of the Barrens seminary in Perryville, Missouri.