On this day, April 7, in 1922, the United States secretary of the interior secretly sold the rights to oil reserves in Wyoming in what became known as the Teapot Dome bribery scandal.
The Teapot Dome is an oil field on public land in Wyoming, so named for Teapot Rock, an outcrop resembling a teapot overlooking the field. The term “Teapot Dome” became a synonym for governmental corruption.
Eighty-seven years ago Tuesday, President Warren G. Harding’s secretary of the interior, Albert B. Fall, secretly sold the right to the oil reserves in Teapot Dome. He also worked out similar deals on other reserves.
In return for the leases, Fall received large cash gifts, cattle and no-interest “loans.”
Fall was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000 for accepting bribes. The oil fields eventually were restored to the U.S. government through a Supreme Court decision in 1927.
