Haroldson Lafayette Hunt Jr., American oilman born in 1889 and died in 1974. He built his fortune in the petroleum industry chiefly by buying up leases in the East Texas Oil Field, then the largest oil deposit discovered in the United States, his first major purchase there in 1930 coming from the oil speculator Columbus Marion Joiner for 30,000 dollars. Hunt founded Hunt Oil Company in 1936 and used his East Texas holdings as the foundation of one of the largest personal oil fortunes in American history, with Fortune magazine ranking him among the eight wealthiest people in the United States by 1957 and estimating his fortune at 400 to 700 million dollars. His consolidation of leases across the East Texas field helped establish the pattern of large scale, well organized independent oil field development that shaped the twentieth century American petroleum industry.
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1. Wikidata: H. L. Hunt
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