Teapot Dome: The Scandal in the Sagebrush
Near Casper, Wyoming
About nineteen miles north of Casper, out in the Powder River Basin, there is a sandstone formation called Teapot Rock. It used to look like a teapot. The handle vanished in nineteen thirty. The spout broke off in nineteen sixty-two. By that point the rock's famous years were already long behind it.
In nineteen fifteen, the federal government designated the oil field beneath and around Teapot Rock as Naval Petroleum Reserve Number Three. The Navy had converted its warships from coal to oil, and the government wanted a strategic reserve of petroleum that could not be claimed by private companies in a national emergency.
In nineteen twenty-one, President Warren Harding transferred control of the naval petroleum reserves from the Navy Department to the Interior Department. His Interior Secretary was a New Mexico senator named Albert Fall. In nineteen twenty-two, Fall quietly leased the Teapot Dome reserve, without competitive bidding, to a Texas oilman named Harry Sinclair. Fall accepted what he called loans and gifts totaling more than four hundred thousand dollars, the equivalent of several million dollars in current terms.
A Senate investigation, led by Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana, uncovered the arrangement. The hearings ran through nineteen twenty-four. The Supreme Court voided the leases in nineteen twenty-seven. Fall was convicted of accepting bribes in nineteen twenty-nine, becoming the first sitting cabinet officer in American history to be sentenced to federal prison. Harry Sinclair, who gave the bribes, was acquitted of the bribery charge itself, though he served a short sentence for contempt of the Senate.
Before Watergate, Teapot Dome was the standard by which Americans measured political scandal. The rock it was named for no longer looks like a teapot. The corruption it represented had a cleaner shape: money passed, records obscured, and a cabinet officer who believed the arrangement would go unnoticed.
