From the Archives: Kathryn Cleaver’s hunch leads to fortune

After handling a Seal Beach subdivision, Arthur Cleaver was left with a odd shaped three-acre lot. When he thought about selling it, his wife Kathryn Cleaver had second thoughts. They kept the lot.

A story in the Feb. 27, 1928, Los Angeles Times explains:

Reports to the effect that J. Paul Getty, oil operator, plans to drill as least two new wells to the deepest zone in the Seal Beach field, on the Cleaver lease at Los Alamitos, recalls the interesting experience of A. W. Cleaver of Fullerton some years ago in subdividing 240 acres practically in the heart of what has since become a rich oil field.

A business man is expected to have at least reasonable ability to see the future, but he cannot be expected to see a mile into the earth, so it is not at all surprising that Mr. Cleaver saw nothing but real estate possibilities in the tract, but everyone will congratulate him on the face that circumstances caused him to hold three acres of it, which have made him quite wealthy.

Almost twenty-four years ago Mr. Cleaver, a laundry operator, organized the Long Beach and Alamitos Improvement Company to subdivide a tract of low land just east of Long Beach, but now within its city limits. The lots moved slowly at prices ranging between $100 and $350 each.

Finally Mr. Cleaver disposed of all but about eight acres, and three years ago, just before the oil belched forth, he sold, for $3500, a five-acre block where the Pan American Petroleum Company developed several excellent wells.

All that was left was a long, narrow strip, hardly fifteen feet wide in places. It was a subdivision remnant, and nobody seemed to want it. At one end it squared out into about two acres, but a string of it 1500 feet long was too narrow for an oil derrick.

When oil was found at Seal Beach, J. Paul Getty leased the strip from Mr. Cleaver and drilled four or five wells on the largest portion of it. The first of these wells, yielding 12,000 barrels per day, came in on Mr. Cleaver’s sixty-seventh birthday anniversary. Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver celebrated by going down and buying them a fine new car, and they are now planning to make a tour of the world this year. Being a modest man, Mr. Cleaver is shy about telling how much money he has derived from his one-sixth of the oil and gas, but a fairly sharp pencil manages to figure out that the income for nine months of 1927, must have been $40,000 to $60,000 per month, and that it must still range about $25,000 per month.

In Fullerton, Mr. Cleaver operates the Sanitary Laundry at no. 225 West Santa Fe avenue. He is now engaged in spending considerable oil royalty money to remodel the entire front of the laundry and install a lot of the very latest laundry machinery.

He admits that at one time he felt disposed to sell the shoestring strip for whatever he could get for it, but says Mrs. Cleaver “had a hunch” that they had better keep it.

This apparently was one hunch that paid off big.

Arthur W. Cleaver passed away on Dec. 18, 1943. His second wife, Kathryn Cleaver passed away on March 16, 1942.