Standard Oil an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act, Section II. It ordered Standard to break up into 34 independent companies with different boards of directors, the biggest two of the companies were Standard Oil of New Jersey (which became Exxon) and Standard Oil of New York (which became Mobil). Standard's president, John D. Rockefeller, had long since retired from any management role. But, as he owned a quarter of the shares of the resultant companies, and those share values mostly doubled, he emerged from the dissolution as the richest man in the world. The dissolution had actually propelled Rockefeller's personal
Associated Oil Company in 1929 to construct a new railroad drawbridge a year later. In 1926, the Associated Oil Company stock owned by the Pacific Oil Company, which was formed by Southern Pacific Company to handle their oil interests, was sold to a new holding company, the Tide Water Associated Oil Company, which also acquired the Tide Water Oil Company at the same time. Standard Oil of New Jersey, the largest stockholder in Tide Water at the time, later formed a holding company, Mission Corporation, to hold the stocks of Tide Water and Associated. Beginning in 1934, Associated Oil Company commissioned a series