Early Career
Doheny was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin to Patrick "Pat" and Eleanor Elizabeth "Ellen" (née Quigley) Doheny. His father was born in Ireland, and fled Tipperary in the wake of the Great Famine. Patrick tried whaling after leaving Ireland and arriving in Labrador. His mother was born in St. Johns, Newfoundland, and was a former school teacher. After Patrick and Ellen were married and moved to Wisconsin his father became a laborer, working construction, and a gardener.
Doheny graduated from high school at the age of 15 and he was named the valedictorian of his class. Following his father’s death several months after his graduation, he was employed by the U.S. Geological Survey, and in 1873 was sent to Kansas with a party surveying and subdividing the Kiowa-Comanche lands. The following year he left the Geological Survey to pursue his fortune prospecting, first in the Black Hills of South Dakota and then in Arizona Territory and New Mexico Territory.
He is listed in the 1880 United States Census as a "painter" living in Prescott, Arizona. Later in 1880 he was in the Black Range in western Sierra County of southwestern New Mexico Territory, living in the rough silver-mining town of Kingston (about 10 miles (16 km) west of Hillsboro), prospecting, mining, and buying and trading mining claims. He worked in the famed Iron King mine, just north of Kingston, that drew men to the area. During his time in Kingston he met two men who would play important roles in his later life; Albert Fall, the future Secretary of the Interior, and his business partner Charles A. Canfield.
Doheny and Canfield together worked the former’s Mount Chief Mine with little success, and thus in 1886 Canfield prospected further in the Kingston area, leasing and developing with great success the Comstock Mine (not to be confused with the Comstock Lode of Virginia City, Nevada). Doheny declined to join him in this venture, and whereas Canfield made a small fortune from it, Doheny was reduced eventually to doing odd jobs (including painting) to support his family.
In the Spring of 1891, Doheny left New Mexico and moved to Los Angeles, California, attracted by Canfield’s success in Los Angeles real estate. Canfield had previously left New Mexico with $110,000 in cash from his Comstock Mine venture, a sum that 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, was deeply in debt.
Briefly the two men tried their prospecting luck 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. By 1892, Doheny was so poor he could not afford to pay for his boarding room.
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