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

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 was illegal, with some games allowed, until 1931.

The syndicate’s modus operandi became the example of how it was done in Nevada, a guide for their mobster friends who, later, would rule gambling in Las Vegas.

Along with games of chance, the Reno Mob offered endless alcohol during Prohibition and sex for sale. The hotbed of vice that was The Biggest Little City, along with a relaxed divorce law, spurred tourism long before Vegas became the state’s largest metropolis and took over as that industry’s leader. Further, with their dollars (and perhaps coercion), the racketeers were instrumental in getting gambling legalized in Nevada.

George Wingfield

The Strings Puller

George Wingfield, Sr. (born 1876): The man with the vision (and gobs of money at the time), he initially orchestrated the launch of illegal gambling in Reno, choosing the few men to effect his plan, getting them trained in casino operations and having them run games in town. Wingfield wanted the buildings he owned to be filled and believed the offer of gaming in them would achieve that end. Although he, himself, was a savvy card player, he needed what he believed to be a cleaner image to carry out his other pursuits, such as politics.

Bill Graham

Jim McKay

The Deadly Duo

James “Jim/Cinch” Carmichael McKay (born 1888) and William “Bill/Curly” James Graham (born 1888): After meeting in Tonopah, McKay and Graham became fast friends and crime partners. Wingfield had them learn the gaming business at one of his and Abelman’s casinos, The Big Casino in Tonopah, before he summoned them to Reno in the 1920s to establish illegal gaming there. While maintaining a thin allegiance to Wingfield, the pair quickly plotted their own course, which would, for starters, involve launching their own casino (Willows) and brothel (Stockade).  

William Justi

The City Councilman

William A. Justi (born 1873): Justi was the councilman for Reno’s liberal Third Ward, in which most casinos were located, between 1923 and 1944. He also was the council’s police committee chairman for a number of years. In those two roles, he could and did act on behalf of McKay and Graham, who allegedly owned him.

The Loyal Associate

Nathan “Nick” Abelman (born 1876): Abelman was Wingfield’s willing, sensible and most law abiding partner throughout the years. When he made Wingfield’s acquaintance in Goldfield, Nevada in 1904, he already had experience running saloons in the Midwest. Abelman went on to co-own, with various partners, numerous gambling enterprises.

The Willing Henchmen

These Reno Mobsters had a few, trusted men who worked at their various Northern Nevada casinos — Willows, Bank Club, Rex, Cal-Neva Lodge, Haymarket, Monte Carlo, Country Club — overseeing the gaming, ejecting troublemakers, assaulting cheaters, encouraging debtors to square up and the like. They also did other dirty work, such as menacing competitors and delivering graft. They were:

Jack Sullivan

Bones Remmer

Elmer “Bones” F. Remmer (born 1898): Jokingly called “Bones” due to his ample size, Remmer grew up in the Bay Area of Northern California. He was mean and feared. Seemingly more entrepreneurial than Sullivan and Hall, Remmer would go on to co-own the Cal-Neva Lodge, run several casinos and clubs on San Francisco Bay’s east and west sides and become embroiled with both Jewish-American, Italian-American and other mobsters.

Jack Sullivan né John B. Scarlett (born 1879): A professional boxer in his youth, Sullivan “was a large man with a brusque manner and an intimidating personality,” wrote Dwayne Kling in The Rise of the Biggest Little City. He moved to Reno from Tonopah with friend Henry “Tex” Hall in the 1920s. He would help open and run the Willows then own a portion of and operate Bank Club, both popular Reno casinos.

Henry “Tex” Hall (born 1878): A cowboy from Texas, Hall worked as a manager at several Graham-McKay casinos, including the Cal-Neva Lodge, of which he came to own a piece.

The Reno Mob’s dominion began to ebb when crises arose during the 1930s — financial ruin for Wingfield and prison terms for McKay, Graham and Hall.

The Business Model

These were the Mobsters’ 5 main tenets behind running unlawful gambling:

1) Pay Bribes: They paid whatever graft necessary — to members of the police force and sheriff’s office, the mayor, at least one city councilmember and some higher-level politicians — to continue their reign obstacle free. In return, they were permitted to serve alcohol until 1933 when Prohibition ended and offer gambling until 1931 when Nevada legalized it. In the instances they landed themselves in a legal bind, rare because they were generally protected from such occurrences, the officials in their pockets made the trouble go away.

2) Limit the Competition: The quartet decided who, if anyone, could open their own gambling enterprise in town. It usually had to be someone that at least one man in their group knew and/or would vouch for. If approved, however, the mobsters imposed stipulations, such as limits on the quantity or type of gambling offered. They demanded payments for being allowed to operate — 15 percent of the profits.

The gangsters were especially ruthless with men and women who opened shop without asking their permission beforehand and/or after they’d been warned to do so. In those cases, the four would  worm their way in and usurp the operation for themselves or, via threats, destruction of property and intimidation, they’d drive the proprietors out of their businesses and even out of town.

3) Do Whatever It Takes: The existence of laws didn’t deter the group, especially McKay and Graham, when they desired something. They exercised free will always and carried out (or, most often, had someone else carry out) whatever was necessary to remain on top in Northern Nevada’s gambling world. 

“Both were equally ruthless players within and outside the limits of the law,” wrote the authors of Baby Face Nelson about McKay and Graham.

4) Don’t Tolerate Cheating: McKay and Graham had no qualms about mangling and bloodying the bodies of cheaters, both customers and dealers, as punishment. Ironically, the zero tolerance rule didn’t apply to them; they ran various scams on primarily unsuspecting tourists, bilking them for fortunes at a time.

5) Reward Underling Loyalty:  The four acknowledged their subordinate’s obedience and solid work performance by affording them an ownership stake in one of their casinos.

Sources

Photos of McKay, Graham and Sullivan: from the University of Nevada, Reno’s Special Collections
Photo of Wingfield: from the Nevada Historical Society