Hunt made Tyler the headquarters for Hunt Oil in 1936 as the East Texas Oil Fields boomed, using his fortune and connections made in Arkansas oil to finance it. He soon transferred his company to Dallas. In 1938, he moved to the White Rock Lake area of Dallas, paying $69,000 (or more than $1.5 million in modern dollars) for a spread of ten acres and a home that was expanded into a Dallas landmark. Here, he fed deer on the property, raised his family, traveled the world, and carefully tended his empire. His years in Dallas would only see a steady increase in his fortune and influence.
During World War II, he supplied the government with oil needed for victory. As the largest producer in the country by the 1940s, his company sold most of the oil used by the Allies during the war. In fact, he personally sold more oil to the U. S. and the Allies than all of Germany produced on its own during the entire war.
By war's end, Hunt was also supplying about 85% of the natural gas used in the eastern United States. In 1948, he was named the richest man in the world by the media, with a fortune estimated at $263 million (about $3.5 billion in 2024 dollars). But he was not content. He continued nurturing his oil business and soon expanded into consumer products, selling such items as cosmetics, vitamins, and health food through a spinoff company called HLH Products. By the late 1950s, journalists estimated his fortune at more than $500 million (or about $5.5 billion in 2024 dollars). His time as a nearly bankrupt famer in Arkansas was a distant memory by this point.
In 1955, his first wife, Lyda Bunker Hunt, died. Two years later, Hunt married Ruth Ray, who had been involved in an affair with him for years and already had four children with him. In spite of this scandalous relationship, H. L. Hunt became a prominent member and contributor to First Baptist Church in Dallas.
He became increasingly involved in conservative political causes as he grew older. Throughout the 1950s, he bankrolled a conservative radio program called Facts Forum, whose commentators condemned the New Deal and Jews while supporting the anti-communist activities of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who was later disgraced for those same antics. In the 1960 election, he openly condemned John F. Kennedy for his Roman Catholic faith and for what Hunt saw as weak anti-communist credentials.
Hunt's prominence in Dallas and in conservative causes coupled with his loud criticisms of Kennedy led some conspiracy theorists openly attempt to link Hunt to Kennedy's assassination in 1963. No serious evidence of such a link ever emerged, but the FBI provided bodyguards for Hunt in the chaotic aftermath of Kennedy's death.
Hunt began writing extensively in the 1960s, writing newspaper and magazine columns condemning communism and commenting on the oil business. He wrote several books, including Why Not Speak? (1964) and Hunt for Truth (1965). In 1967, he wrote a novel titled Alpaca in which he described his ideal world. The unequal system he envisioned had young adults receiving one vote, elderly citizens receiving two votes, and the wealthiest having four votes.
Hunt died quietly in Dallas in November 1974. In the years after his death, his life was the subject of numerous books as well as endless speculation and gossip in Dallas social circles.
