The Faro Fadeaway
1825-1958 The hottest game in the Old West between 1825 and 1915, faro is pretty much extinct in the United States today. If you’ve never heard of it — and you aren’t alone there —…
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1825-1958 The hottest game in the Old West between 1825 and 1915, faro is pretty much extinct in the United States today. If you’ve never heard of it — and you aren’t alone there —…
1945-1950 Although gambling was illegal in Miami, Florida, in the 1940s, one lavish casino operated there for five years with the blessing of the local sheriff. Club 86, on Biscayne Boulevard, which belonged to local…
1935 Stanford University’s (California) Indians and Southern Methodist University’s (Texas) Mustangs were to vie in the Rose Bowl football game on New Year’s Day, and this meant trains of people traveling from The Lone Star State to…
1958-present Las Vegas, Nevada resident Howie C. had gambled so much during the 1950s and ’60s that he owed banks, finance companies and loan sharks. He often had borrowed money from his mom and even…
1950s The manufacture of slot machines, roulette wheels and other gambling equipment was big business in the United States until the mid-20th century when new federal legislation curbed it. In 1950, the Kefauver Committee, officially the…
1968 The town of Faro in the Yukon (northwestern Canada) was named after the card game of chance, which was popular there during the days of the Klondike Gold Rush between 1896 and 1899.
1940s A spate of “roadside zoos” opened along various Nevada highways, typically in rural areas, during the late 1940s. The owners were hustlers who lured unsuspecting tourists onto their grounds with the promise of seeing…
1904 An industrious individual tunneled beneath the Tonopah Club in Tonopah, Nevada, cut a hole through the casino floor and stole $1,000 in gold and silver from the box under the faro table – all…
1905-1941 Imagine in the early 1900s, a block about the length of a football field, in the Mojave Desert in Nevada where gambling, drinking and prostitution prevailed free from law enforcement’s intrusion, and where fights…
1920 It was 3 a.m. on a Monday. About 15 men were gambling in the Desert Club. One who’d been there all night, sitting alone, watching and waiting to make his move was George Strickland.…
1955 When Nevada legislators legalized gambling in 1931, they didn’t consider one significant caveat. The omission came to light in January 1955 when an industrious Las Vegas casino patron was arrested for using Mexican 10…
1908 Two deputy sheriffs in the mining camp of Rawhide, Nevada,* were on the take. For a regularly paid fee, they allowed establishments to operate legal games without a license and/or run banned ones as well.…