Business: Kettleman Kitty

Washington Henry Ochsner, a Swiss-born oil geologist, died in 1927 at 47 in a Portland, Ore. hotel, alone and virtually penniless. Behind he left a widow, two former wives, three children, a host of disgruntled backers and oil royalty rights on 2,538 gullied, sun-scorched acres in California's Kettleman hills. The year after Ochsner died, pay sands were struck in those hills, opening up one of the country's major oil pools. From the Ochsner acres nearly $1,000,000 of royalties have already accumulated, and estimates of the eventual total run as high as $10,000,000. Yet...