Leo Ray Newfarmer was born on September 14, 1909 in Montrose, Colorado. As a young man, he worked with the United States Forest Service on the Grand Mesa in Colorado, where he acquired a love of the outdoors. His uncle, Ross L. Heaton, inspired him to pursue geology. In 1929, Newfarmer began attending the University of Colorado; after his parents moved to California, he lost resident tuition and transferred to The University of California, Berkeley; he graduated with an A.B. in economic geology in 1933. Several years later, he began working for Shell Oil Company in San Antonio, Texas. In Texas, he met and married Adelle Debenport.

Newfarmer worked for Shell throughout his career in a variety of locations. From 1949 until 1960, he was based in Los Angeles, California, as he worked as exploration manager for the region of the western United States. Along with former World War II pilot Jimmie Doolittle, who was vice president of Shell, and Sam Bowlby, Newfarmer participated in oil exploration in Alaska in the 1950s. In the 1960s, the Newfarmer family moved to Houston, Texas, where he became manager of the Shell Canadian Exploration Company. In 1964, Newfarmer assumed presidency of a Shell research and development subsidiary, SoniCo, in San Diego, California. He retired to La Jolla, California, in 1968. In addition to his career, Newfarmer was a member of numerous professional societies, including: the Geological Society of America, the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Leo Newfarmer died on June 8, 1998.