1938-Today

Bets placed, spectators occupy the stands, waiting. Anticipation, excitement fill the air. Finally, the get-ready bell dings, and the crowd quickly quiets.

The start signal sounds. The gates open. Out lunge the competitors, into an immediate sprint. Hunting instinct kicks in. They deftly chase a single lure, sometimes a hare, unaware it’s fake.

Muscles in their lithe bodies bulge as they round the track. Their stride is wide, their motion smooth. They run as fast as 45 miles per hour.

In a flash, 30 seconds or so, they finish the lap. The winner is announced. Payouts are made.

This described activity, live dog racing as a gambling form, never really took off in The Silver State like it did in others, such as Florida and Oregon.

Today, it’s illegal, per Nevada Revised Statute 466. The law dictates that running such an operation is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and/or a jail term up to six months. Anyone with such a conviction also could be disqualified from obtaining or maintaining a gambling license. (Dog racing without gambling, that doesn’t violate any animal cruelty laws, is legal in Nevada.)

Maiden Races In Nevada

The first dog racing with gambling in Nevada took place in 1938 and 1939 at the Reno Speedway at Lawton’s Hot Springs just west of Reno. (The first dog track was built in the U.S. in 1919, in California.) Presumably, these races at Lawton’s were held illegally because existing Nevada laws that legalized gambling didn’t cover dog racing or optional betting. At the same time, no law specified either as being prohibited. With optional betting, wagerers purchased options on dogs of their choice, and winners redeemed their options for cash.

All was quiet on the Nevada dog racing front until 1947.

The Pot Gets Stirred

In September of that year, some Los Angeles-based promoters doing business as the Nevada Turf and Kennel Club applied to the Nevada  Racing Commission for a license to conduct dog racing in Reno. Three members comprised the commission — Ernie W. Cragin and J.K. Houssels, in Las Vegas, who opposed dog racing, and Tom G. Wheelwright, of Ely, who didn’t.

The racing commissioners denied the permit for a few reasons. Primarily, they believed the applicants were more interested in the gambling element than the racing one. Also, commissioners declared dog racing to not be in Nevada’s best interest.

With the assistance of Reno attorney Douglas Busey, the race promoters filed a writ of mandamus that would make the racing commission grant them the license they’d requested.  

Judge Merwyn Brown of Winnemucca heard arguments on the petition in December and announced his ruling two months later.

He determined the license denial lacked merit, given the commissioners had failed to provide any evidence to support their reasons for it. Brown stated, too, the commissioners had overstepped their bounds in that the question of whether dog racing was good or bad for Nevada was a public policy matter, and thus under the Legislature’s purview, not theirs.

Thus, Brown ordered the commission to issue a license to the Nevada Turf and Kennel Club, and in doing so, essentially declared dog racing with gambling legal.

Despite the green light, the license recipients never followed through with a track and races, for unknown reasons.

Pros And Cons

With the issue fresh in Nevadans’ minds, during the 1949 Nevada legislative session, the Senate introduced bill 103, which sought to ban dog racing by classifying it as a public nuisance.

Proponents of the measure claimed dog racing wasn’t clean (doping was prevalent), not established in The Silver State and without state laws to control it.

Opponents argued dog racing would bring more tourists to Nevada and increase much-needed revenue for it. At the time, dog racing was legal in eight states, including California and Oregon. At least four lobbyists from California aggressively sought to get the bill defeated. According to Nevada Assemblyman James Johnson (D.), White Pine County, some of their tactics were unacceptable.

“One of them even intimated to me that they didn’t have any money now but that if we killed this bill they might have some within a year or two and they intimated they might be able to pay off later,” Johnson said (Reno Evening Gazette, March 12, 1949).

Assemblyman Harry Claiborne (D.), Clark County, argued that allowing dog racing wasn’t worth any amount of money and if it was permitted, “you’re going to have in two years the biggest mess in Nevada that you’ve ever had with gambling” (Nevada State Journal, March 13, 1949).

Governor Vail Pittman signed SB103 into law in early April 1949. (Interestingly, while the bill added dog racing as a public nuisance, it removed prostitution as one.)

The Issue Revisited

Walking back its longtime stance on dog racing, the Nevada Legislature passed a bill in 1973 allowing greyhound racing but only in Henderson and only when held in conjunction with horse racing.

In December 1976, the racing commission granted a license to Las Vegas Downs Inc. to hold dog racing 200 days a year and horse racing, 100 days, once the track is built. The commission also waived the horse racing requirement for the first season.  

In August 1977, the same agency granted David J. Funk & Associates a gambling license to manage the proposed (it still hadn’t been built) Henderson dog and horse race track. Funk and his family had lots of experience in this area, having run multiple dog tracks in Arizona.

Financing problems delayed dog track construction time and time again, but it finally happened in 1980. The track opened in mid-January 1981, offering daily racing and parimutuel betting.

For the second season, by law, the track had to be modified for horse racing, another expense, and it wasn’t done. This ended dog racing in Henderson.

No More Wavering

Starting in the 1990s, many U.S. states reversed their laws that legalized live dog racing plus betting. Nevada was the eighth state to do so. It lowered the final curtain on this gambling form in 1997. The pertinent statute, NRS 466.095 reads: “Issuance of license to conduct dog racing or pari-mutuel wagering in connection with certain dog racing prohibited.”

The law remains in effect today, nearly a quarter-century later.

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Top greyhound photo: By Matt Schumitz, from Wikimedia Commons

Sources

Einstoss

1939-1941

Bernard “Bernie” Einstoss was a well-known gambler in Northern Nevada for nearly two decades, between 1947 and 1965.* Prior to that, he masterminded and executed a scheme to fix horse races** in California by bribing and threatening jockeys to “pull” the horses they commandeered, or keep them from winning.

Einstoss went by the name Barney Mooney and introduced himself to people as Mooney.** He earned the nickname “Big Mooney,” wrote John Christgau, “because he liked to sweep into fancy nightclubs and set up the house with drinks — especially champagne, if he was flush from a big winning bet” (The Gambler and The Bug Boy). Einstoss began placing bets in grade school on marbles and chocolates and by high school, which he dropped out of, had progressed to wagering on prize fights, horse racing, baseball and more.

How It Worked

Einstoss, 27, with the help of some accomplices, launched his race fixing scheme with the season’s start in 1939 in Southern California, where he ran a suite of bookmaking rooms in Los Angeles with fellow gamblers, Benjamin Chapman and I.W. “Doc Kebo” Kivel.

The three spread tips around Hollywood movie lots that specific horses were sure to win in certain races, and they’d take the bets on them. Specific targets were high rollers like George Raft and Don Ameche. Then Einstoss would have the jockeys riding those horses deliberately lose the races. The trio profited from the betters’ (or suckers’) losses, assuredly and amply.

Manipulation Of Jockeys

Einstoss had intermediaries recruit and pay jockeys who could be bribed, typically those who were young, under age 20 for instance, vulnerable and desperate for money. Based on handicapping percentages, Einstoss determined which horses he wanted to lose and got word to the corresponding jockeys to “pull” them, sometimes multiple horses for one jockey in a day. Einstoss paid the riders $200 (about $3,500 today) per favorite and $100 ($1,700 today) per longshot horse they pulled and paid the go-betweens $200 per jockey they turned.

Einstoss had thrashed a jockey who hadn’t done what he’d asked, and most expressed a fear of him and belief that he’d kill them if provoked. In at least one instance, when a jockey failed to lose a race because he couldn’t physically restrain the horse, Einstoss told him, “You cost me $30,000! Thirty-thousand dollars! I’ve thrown boys in the ocean for less” (The Gambler and The Bug Boy). (This is equivalent to about $532,000 today.)

“These boys, I feel sorry for personally because I believe that they are just young kids, that is all, and they are not mature. They have not the state of mind to think things out … and they are tempted with easy money … far more than they ever saw before in their lives,” Jerry Giesler, chairman of the California Horse Racing Board, said at a hearing where numerous jockeys were compelled to tell what they knew about the race fixing.

Perpetrators Caught, Plot Halted

In November 1940, following an investigation, Einstoss was arrested and, eventually, so were his partners in crime. They were his brother, gopher and bet taker, Jack Einstoss; gamblers Chapman and Kivel; and two middlemen, Saul “Sonny” Greenberg, a horse trainer, and James Joseph Murphy, real name Irving Sangbusch, a race track follower.

Because fixing races wasn’t illegal (yet) in California, the group was charged with conspiracy and contributing to the delinquency of minors (the jockeys).

The Prosecution’s Case

At the trial, which began on February 28, 1941, the State of California argued that the defendants ran bookmaking establishments and through control of jockeys, altered the outcomes of races on which they’d accepted wagers and themselves had bet at the tracks. Prosecutors alleged that the group had fixed more than 100 races at various tracks — Hollywood Park, Del Mar, Bay Meadows and Tanforan — yielding an estimated $1 million (about $17.7 million today).

Sangbusch/Murphy testified for the state in exchange for removal of the charges against him. He explained that Reno, Nevada mobster and illegal gambler William “Bill/Curly” Graham had suggested to him that he contact Einstoss and had furnished the phone number. Sangbusch followed through, and the next day met with Einstoss, Kivel, Chapman and others at the bookies’ Hollywood headquarters, where they discussed the race fixing strategy. Subsequently, Sangbusch began working as an intermediary for the group. He admitted to having distributed about $20,000 ($355,000 today) in bribes from Einstoss to certain jockeys.

Defense: Gambler With Scruples

When Einstoss, free on $3,000 bail, took the stand, he claimed he made money by gambling on odds as opposed to race fixing through bribing jockeys. His attorney, Paul McCormick, argued that Einstoss was “always an honest gambler” (Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1941) yet admitted that Einstoss had given money to the jockeys and had known the jockeys, of their own accord, likely were going to pull their horses.

“But the facts are that the jockeys approached Einstoss,” not the other way around, McCormick added. “They were touting him to bet on certain horses and he paid them money for their tips. It is very probable that they might have pulled those horses to make their tips good and therefore collect more money.”

During final arguments, Einstoss “burst into tears,” got up, left the courtroom, went into an adjoining room, sat and sobbed (Nevada State Journal, May 16, 1941).

The End Result

After two months of testimony, at May’s end, the jury found Einstoss guilty on four misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of minors but not on the conspiracy charge. The judge ordered he serve a year in county jail and pay a $1,000 ($17,000 today) fine. The convicted man did both.

Subsequently, Einstoss moved to Reno, Nevada. Over the ensuing decades, he co-owned and had some involvement in the casino operations at the Mapes and Riverside hotels and the Horseshoe Club in Reno, along with the Bal Tabarin at Lake Tahoe in Crystal Bay. He had a smaller, nonoperational ownership in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Most of the jockeys who participated in the plot were suspended indefinitely from horse racing in California.

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* Bernard Einstoss died in 1966 at age 53 in Southern California.
** Horse racing under the parimutuel wagering system has been legal in The Golden State since 1933.
*** The name “Mooney” comes from the Gaelic word “maoin,” which translates into “wealthy” or “descendant of the wealthy one.”

Sources

In each of two consecutive summers, Northern Nevadans experienced on-site, parimutuel* betting on new types of organized races locally: first, midget car in 1937 and greyhound (the dog, not the bus) in 1938.

The public events were held at Lawton’s Hot Springs,** a motel-casino resort located five miles west of Reno on then-U.S. 40. The popular spot for tourists during the hot months had been open since the late 1880s. 

Skid Marks In Their Wake

At Lawton’s, in May, Sterling Price had a 1/5-mile, oval, asphalt macadam racetrack for midget cars built. It was said to be the only completely banked course in the United States; the curves were tilted 5 feet and the straightaways were raised 2 feet to maximize the cars’ speed. (The world speed record for that track size had been 135 mph.)

The race cars were midgets, which had a single-seat chassis, four-cylinder front engine and a rear-wheel-drive layout.

Alongside what he dubbed the Reno Speedway, Price had constructed two grandstands and a parimutuel betting machine in between them.

Through his company, Motor Speedway Corporation, Price had financed and operated racetracks in The Golden State. A former U.S. race car driver, he’d competed on Duesenberg Motors Company’s team 20-plus years earlier.

Additionally, Price carried out $75,000 worth of improvements (about $1.3 million today) to the property. They included converting the ballroom into a casino and bar, remodeling the dining room and cabaret and adding a cocktail lounge. His plan was for his firm to operate the races and cabaret only and lease out the other concessions, including the swimming pool, hot baths, gaming and restaurant.

The debut of midget car racing at Lawton’s was slated for June 25, and 40 days of races were touted. Eight to ten races, including a 15-lap main event, were to be held each night, with a minimum of 21 cars participating. At the Reno Speedway, the crowd was to get its fill of thrills, crashes, wagering — which was new to the sport in the U.S. as gambling was legal in Nevada — and, sometimes, even payoffs.

“Midget automobile racing is one of the fastest-growing sports in the country, and already has thousands of followers in California. We will offer the finest competition with the finest drivers in the country,” said Sterling Price (Nevada State Journal, May 2, 1937).

In fact, the sport had originated somewhere in California, where and when is up for debate, and by 1937 had become one of the hottest pastimes in San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was hugely popular in England, with each major race drawing 30,000 to 100,000 people in 1936, as well as Australia and New Zealand.

Day One Omen

The races at Lawton’s got off to a rough start. First, the grand opening was delayed a week because the track wasn’t dry in time. Then, on the night the event finally got underway, July 1, it was discovered the track was unstable, with loose spots causing the cars to gouge holes in the concrete. Further, the inside rail proved unsafe. Virgil Price (possibly a relative of Sterling), Reno Speedway manager, refunded the attendees their money and enticed them back with free admission the following night.

The track was repaired, and a three-day meet held subsequently.

Then signs of money problems appeared. In mid-July, bandleader Harry Short sued Motor Speedway for breach of contract and back pay as it failed to give him the required one week’s notice to discontinue services. Short had provided a five-piece orchestra and singer.

Within two weeks, various tradesmen, including a painter and electrician who’d done work on the speedway facilities, sued Virgil Price for lack of payment.

It’s unknown if the inaugural racing season at Reno Speedway ever even finished, but a paucity of newspaper articles on the subject after July 19 suggests that perhaps it didn’t.

A subsequent story about midget car racing at Lawton’s hinted at its fate: “The sport did not prosper at once, and the track was closed” (Nevada State Journal, April 2, 1939).

Greyhounds Beat It

The track was remodeled and reopened the next summer, in 1938, for a different type of races. “Sixty-four lightning fast dogs” were scheduled to kick off the season at the track of the Reno Kennel Club at Lawton’s.

The canine stars had names like Max Baer (named after the boxer who actually had trained at the resort previously in the 1930s), Nifty Judgment and Sally Judgment.

The dogs were to compete six nights a week, with eight races, including hurdles, held nightly and eight competitors in each.

Before the hounds raced, their trainers paraded them before the spectators, allowing them to choose their favorites and, if desired, place bets on them. When the greyhounds were released to race, they chased a life-like, electrical rabbit around the track.

Déjà Vu

Similar to the opening night with the midget cars, problems occurred during startup. Mechanical difficulties with the rabbits caused the last two races of the night to be postponed. Rain further delayed resumption of the events due to a wet track, but that happened a few evenings later.  

By mid-July, however, no further mention of the races or results appeared in the local newspapers, leading one to deduce that the greyhound races in Reno had gone the way of the midget cars, curtailed in advance of the season’s finale.

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Why do you suppose neither type of racing was successful?

* Parimutuel is a system of wagering on races in which the winners divide the total amount bet, less management expenses, in proportion to the quantities they wagered individually.

** Lawton’s Hot Springs was located at 9400 W. Fourth St., which now is within Reno’s city limits. The property has been shuttered and vacant since 1982.

Sources

1930s

1937

An armored truck, accompanied by three deputy sheriff cars, was moving $262,000 (about $4.5 million today) the 15 miles from the Del Mar racetrack in California down the coastal highway to a San Diego bank. The money was the track’s share of one day’s parimutuel handle, or total amount wagered. This amount, from that single day, was roughly two-thirds the revenue that the City of Reno, Nevada generated over a year, the 1937-1938 fiscal year, from gambling taxes and license fees.

An anonymous phone report of a murder at a café in the City of Del Mar caused the deputies to abandon the transport vehicle and head there.

When they arrived, though, they learned the phone call had been a ruse, likely to isolate the money-containing truck so it could be robbed more easily. Upon the deputies radioing in their discovery, a swarm of law enforcement officers responded. They reached the armored vehicle in time to foil any holdup and get the cash to its destination without incident.

Racetrack Beginnings

Crooner and thoroughbred horse owner and racing fan, Bing Crosby, was behind the development of the Del Mar racetrack. He and actor Pat O’Brien convinced a handful of mostly Hollywood celebrities to invest cumulatively about $2 million (about $34 million today) to lease the new Del Mar Fairgrounds and add a racetrack, facilities and clubhouse. Along with Crosby and O’Brien, the Del mar partnership consisted of fellow actors Gary Cooper, Joe E. Brown and Oliver Hardy and businessman/racehorse owner, Charles S. Howard.

“Del Mar has class written all over it — from the stable area to the swanky interior of the Turf Club,” described Paul Lowry (Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1937). “Del Mar has the Spanish touch of old California, the artistic, aristocratic air of the day of the Dons. The buildings are in keeping from stem to stern — from the adobe outer walls to the architectural dream that brought the clubhouse and grandstand into being.”

With A Grin And A Song

On the Del Mar racetrack’s opening day, Wednesday, July 7, 1937, Crosby greeted the attendees, about 20,000 in all. “[He] appeared at the grandstand turnstiles, smoking his pipe and tipping his dark blue yachting cap to customers as they entered the grounds,” wrote John Christgau in The Gambler & The Bug Boy.

After the bugle sounded for the inaugural race, Crosby sand Where The Turf Meets The Surf, a ditty he co-wrote with James V. Monaco and Johnny Burke specifically for the Del Mar racetrack:

Where the turf meets the surf
Down at old Del Mar
Take a plane
Take a train
Take a car.
There is a smile on every face
And a winner in each race
Where the turf meets the surf
At Del Mar.

The track’s handle for the season’s first day was $183,041 (roughly $3.15 million today).

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons