Question: What Texas oil tycoon was named the richest man in the United States in 1948?
Answer: H. L. Hunt. Born in 1889 in Illinois, he came to Texas in 1930 after working as an oil field lease broker in Arkansas. Using a $30,000 loan, he bought out the owner of the first productive well in the East Texas oil field. Within a few years, he had amassed 900 oil wells and a pipeline. In 1948, Fortune named Hunt the richest man in the United States, estimating the value of his oil properties at $263 million and the daily production of crude from his wells at 65,000 barrels.
