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1946 Which famous hotel-casino debuted in Las Vegas, Nevada the day after Christmas in this year? Hint: Jimmy Durante was the grand opening star; while on stage he destroyed a $1,600 piano (a $20,000 value…
1930s-1952 Salvatore “Tar Baby” Orester Terrano is one of numerous criminals whom Nevada gambling regulators approved to own a casino in the state. In May 1947, the tax commission granted the Northern Californian, then 43,…
1941 Ten years after Nevada legalized gambling and shortened the residency requirement for divorce from six months to six weeks, Montana took steps to compete. Bills to legalize gambling and to allow 30-day divorces were…
1920s-1930s Presumably to gain money, power and notoriety, a small clique of men monopolized gambling in Reno, Nevada during the 1920s and 1930s through violence, payoffs, intimidation, threats and other gangster techniques. The industry mostly…
1974 The Nevada Gaming Commission, the industry’s state regulatory body, amended regulations to allow employees to own stock in a casino where they worked, without having to get a gambling license, a process that involved…
1937-1938 Within a year of becoming the Maricopa County Attorney, John W. Corbin began work to expose the illegal gambling taking place in the Arizona region. He set his sights on busting the game operators and…
1931 When a Southern Pacific train stopped in Reno on a Friday in May at about 9:15 p.m., four passengers disembarked to squeeze in, before continuing on, a glance at gambling, which Nevada recently had…
1919 Outside many of Reno’s gambling saloons were benches, on which club-goers, typically men, whether or not they’d been gambling, were welcome to sleep the night. (At that time, some forms of gambling were legal…
1958 Tourists Robert and Lola McDurmon may or may not have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on how you look at it. After taking in four shows on the Las…
1947 The Sonoma Inn hotel-casino debuted on May 27, 1947 at 185 W. Winnemucca Boulevard in Winnemucca in Northwestern Nevada, about halfway between Reno and Wells, likely named after the nearby Sonoma Range mountains. In…
1954 “If the Streeter suggestion should catch fire and the state took over gambling, it would be the damnedest experiment tried in the United States, and Nevada would have more hoodlums per square block than…
1935 Singer and actress Judy Garland (neé Frances Ethel Gumm) was discovered while headlining with her two older sisters at the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe in Nevada. Theatrical agent Al Rosen was in the…