Teapot Dome was a government-owned petroleum reserve in Wyoming named after a distinctive nearby rock formation. A Democratic senator from Montana named Tom Walsh (Harding and his cabinet were Republicans) led an investigation of the government's lease on the reserves there, and in a few other places, and found that President Harding's Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, had accepted bribes to lease the rights to the reserves to Sinclair Oil (the dinosaur logo gas station) and Pam American Oil (sold to Standard Oil and later Amoco, now BP) at well below market price and without any competitive bidding.

Shortly before this bit of corruption was exposed, President Harding had transferred the Teapot Dome reserves, as well as the other reserves in question, from control by the Navy to the Department of the Interior. Hm. Curious.

This was all, by the way, within two years of him boldly stepping up to play arbiter between the Gilded Age, robber baron railroad owners and half a million striking railroad workers that he ended up bungling beyond repair. The strike ended when a federal judge issued an injunction forcing the workers to quit striking. Right before that, Harding notoriously vetoed a bill for basic veteran benefits right after World War I. You can see why he was unpopular.