Lorenzi Lake Park c. 1931

1931

Soon after Governor Frederic “Fred” B. Balzar approved wide-open gambling for Nevada, three men applied for an initial gambling license  from the City of Las Vegas to operate a craps game at Lorenzi Lake Park in the Pavilion building.

Lorenzi, with a pool, dance area, two lakes, rowboats and concessions and an affordable entry fee, was a local hot spot for fun. Numerous events, including concerts, prize fights, horse races, dance contests and beauty pageants, took place there.

The city commissioners denied Roy Grimes, R.H. Davenport and D.J. MacCauley a gambling permit, which they believed was unjust and discriminatory. The new state gambling law began on March 19, and they’d filed their application on April 17, in proper form and meeting all the necessary requirements.

Agency’s Approach Questioned

In fact, the commissioners’ refusal to grant the three men a license was in accord with the agency’s recently adopted resolution, on March 30, that it only would afford gambling licenses in the future to entities that already had one from the previous quarter. The moratorium was to go into effect on April 5 and remain in place until the agency could develop a policy for issuing new licenses and outline a city area in which gambling houses could operate.

However, prior to moratorium decision, the commissioners had granted gambling licenses to six clubs — Boulder, Las Vegas, Exchange, Northern, Red Rooster and Meadows.

“The city commissioners arbitrarily fixed the number to be granted at six, and rejected all other applications other than the six favored ones” reported the Nevada State Journal (May 28, 1931).

Further, after the decision, the commissioners make an exception to the moratorium, which was they could grant  gambling licenses to people of the “Ethiopian race” for games at establishments “that catered to persons of the same race.”

Off To The Courts

In early May, Grimes, Davenport and McCauley filed for a writ of mandamus against the Las Vegas mayor and city commissioners, the first court action to be filed in Nevada regarding the 1931 state gambling law. They wanted the court to compel the agency to give them a gambling license. (Another mandamus action in the wake of the new gambling law was taken later in the month, in Northern Nevada.) The trio’s attorney, Charles Lee Horsey, argued that “the law prohibits discriminations and that all who conform to the same standards must be given the same privileges.”

On May 27, the case was presented to the Nevada Supreme Court, whose jurists had to determine whether or not city or county authorities have the right to limit the number of gambling licenses to be issued in a community.

Gambling Stigma Revealed

The ruling, which came two months later, in July, was the opinion of two of the three judges, Edward A. Ducker and Benjamin W. Coleman. It determined that “the city of Las Vegas exercised sound discretion in denying the application” because it was for a type of business that was “of a character regarded as tending to be injurious” (Nevada State Journal, July 9, 1931).  And when it came to this kind of enterprise, governing bodies could control which ones did and didn’t receive gambling licenses.

Contrarily, Judge John A. Sanders, the sole dissenter, opined that the commissioners indeed had acted arbitrarily and discriminatorily and that the writ should be granted.

Sources

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas University Libraries’ Digital Collection

1931

After a brand new roulette setup was put in use at a Las Vegas, Nevada casino, it was discovered the number 28 was black on the wheel, as it should be, but red on the betting layout.

Confusion ensued, particularly concerning red or black bets, when the ball stopped at 28. Was it red or black?

This error also altered the odds for red and black play, as the layout erroneously contained 19 (versus the correct 18) red and 17 black numbers. To resolve the problem, the red 28 on the layout was changed to black. 

Photo from freeimages.com: “Roulette de Casino” by Mike Esprit

1931-1932

Actors Clara Bow and Rex Bell gambled at the Meadows in Las Vegas in summer 1931 and racked up a $1,100 loss (about $18,000 today), for which they left an IOU. By December, the two hadn’t paid what they owed (Bow had wriggled out of covering a gaming debt the year before).

The casino owners — Anthony “The Admiral” Cornero Stralla, his brother Louis Cornero and various mobsters — sued the couple in December for recovery of the funds. The next day, Bow and Bell secretly married in Sin City.

A mysterious incident occurred about 1.5 months later. The newlyweds spent an evening playing games of chance at Vegas’ Boulder Club. After winning about $1,000 playing craps, Bow departed for home, leaving her winnings with her husband, who stayed at the casino.

When Bell eventually left, on his way out, two masked men robbed him. “They prodded the guns so hard in his ribs he decided not to resist them and permitted them to take the money, he said,” reported the Nevada State Journal.

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ Special Collections

1931

Twenty-six miles southeast of Las Vegas, the United States government, in 1931, developed Boulder City as the place to house men working on the Hoover Dam (originally Boulder Dam). The Bureau of Reclamation required the town to be a model community that afforded a clean living environment.

To achieve this, federal legislators officially designated 12 square miles around Boulder City as a federal reservation. This allowed it to prevent gambling, drinking and prostitution near the job site, as federal officers would have jurisdiction and could control the area.

However, that same year, Nevada legalized gambling. In July, a Los Angeleno, F.J. Warren, procured a gambling license, one of the first granted in the state, for a 6,000-square-foot casino and dance hall. He named it the Railroad Pass Club after the segment of rail that connected Union Pacific’s main tracks to those near the dam.

It was to be built roughly five miles from Boulder City, and that area fell into the exclusive U.S. zone. Despite the geographical conflict, construction began on Warren’s enterprise the following month.

It turns out, the location of Warren’s entertainment destination was a 20-acre strip of land for which someone, O.D. Johnson, already had a patent. The federal government couldn’t incorporate in its reservation any acreage of that kind without an act of Congress.

In the end, it didn’t pursue legislation to seize that land, thereby blocking the casino and eliminating that source of temptation for Boulder City residents.

Plan Comes To Fruition

On August 1, the manager, O.T. Buck, opened the Railroad Pass Club, which boasted slot machines, 21/blackjack, craps, roulette, bingo and poker. With gambling, alcohol, food and dancing, it drew dam workers and their families.

“Two of the more notorious [‘resorts’] were the Railroad Pass Club and Texas Acres,” Wm. Joe Simonds wrote in “The Boulder Canyon Project.” “These clubs, surrounded by tents and cabins where prostitutes plied their trade, had vicious reputations, and beatings, knifings and shootings were common.

“When the night was over and the last dollar spent, carloads of drunken workers would race back to Boulder City trying to beat the clock and return before the start of the day shift. Because of the many accidents on the road between Boulder City and Las Vegas, the highway became known as the Widowmaker.”

To gain entry into the facility, guests had to know and provide the password, which was “gaiety.”  Advertising materials highlighted that the temperature inside was a balmy 70 degrees. Electric fans and damp sheets hung from the ceiling cooled the building.

Now In 2017

Eighty-five years later, after changes in ownership and some building remodels, the business still exists, in the same location, what today is the City of Henderson’s southeast corner, at 2800 S. Boulder Highway. The name — Railroad Pass Hotel & Casino — still reflects its connections to the past. Guests can discover just what those are, in the on-site museum, the Heritage Room.

Sources

Governor Fred Balzar

1930

In December, while vacationing in Southern California, Nevada Governor Frederick “Fred” Balzar — foretelling the future — told reporters that gambling already was wide open in his state and that a bill making it official certainly would be brought before the legislature at its next session.

It did happen; Silver State lawmakers legalized gaming in March 1931.

Photo from the Nevada Historical Society

1931

Belle Livingstone wasn’t the typical Nevada gambling club owner.

She’d acted on the stage and screen in the 1890s. She’d mingled with royalty and wealth in Europe and the United States. During Prohibition, she’d operated a speakeasy on New York’s Park Avenue. During that stint, she’d been arrested three times and spent 30 days in jail for selling alcohol to her patrons. She moved to Reno, Nevada in 1931, the year the state legalized gambling.

“Reno, everybody said, was the obvious place for me; Reno was the widest-open town in America, where enforcement was a farce; in Reno the Truckee River sometimes ran dry, but never Old Man River Booze,” Livingstone wrote in her memoir, Belle Out of Order. “Besides, there was always the legal gambling!”

When Livingstone’s request for a gambling license came up for a county board vote, ranchers who lived near the location she’d chosen for her club objected. They said a casino in the neighborhood would be detrimental to the children residing there. They implored the board to investigate Livingstone’s “character and fitness to conduct such a resort” and ask her about her criminal record.

The licensing board, however, approved it in a 3-to-2 decision. In September, The Cowshed, Livingstone’s nightclub, debuted. The former cow-milking barn had been transformed into an entertainment hotspot offering gambling, dining and dancing, and it drew crowds, 1,700 people on opening night alone.

It was located on South Virginia Street, the main Reno thoroughfare, about two miles south of downtown. (For those who know the locale, it was at 2295 S. Virginia Street, which is about where El Pollo Loco is, across from the old Park Lane Mall site.) “You haven’t seen Reno if you haven’t seen Belle’s ‘Cow Shed [sic],’” advertisements declared (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 24, 1931).

Shortly thereafter, troubles surfaced for the owner/hostess. The newspapers reported that internal conflicts arose between Livingstone and her investors, and Prohibition agents raided the club, seized bottles of liquor and arrested its three bartenders.

The Octopus Rears Up

Livingstone, however, attributed the difficulties to the “four-headed Octopus which strangled every business that didn’t pay money into their till … no one could possibly operate without their sanction.” This tentacled animal that controlled Reno’s underground was financier George Wingfield and his three partners, William “Bill” Graham, James “Jim” McKay and an unknown third person, perhaps Reno Councilman William A. Justi.

“In spite of the fact that the governor had given me Nevada and the mayor had given me Reno, the underworld now gave me the works,” she added. “In the weeks that followed they installed in my place a man to provide my liquor, another to watch my cash register, others to stand back of my crap table and my roulette wheel. They carried out a campaign of psychological terrorism to the point where I felt obliged to hire a guard to watch my cottage while I slept. Finally came a complete blockage on my liquor, and what night club can exist without liquor?”

In a few months’ time, the Octopus successfully squeezed out Livingstone. In November, she headed to Dallas to run another club there.

A few days later, The Cowshed’s doors closed, and the entity became caught up in legal entanglements. In 1932, in abatement proceedings, a judge ordered the facility be locked for one year.

In May 1933, new management held a gala opening for The Cowshed, at which hundreds of attendees reveled. Success was fleeting, however, and the establishment closed and reopened a few more times before The Cowshed name was abandoned for good in 1937.

Sources

When customer Mrs. Curt Whitney entered the Nevada Club at 3 a.m. on a Sunday in May 1953, her shoe allegedly got caught in a hole in the floor, and she fell.

More than a year later, she and her husband sued the casino. She sought $35,000 in damages for injuries to her right leg and back and having been hospitalized at various times for a total of seven weeks. Her husband sued for $12,812.05 for medical and household expenses and loss of his wife’s companionship.

This is one example of the accident liability lawsuits that became common after Nevada legalized gambling in 1931. Here are three more cases, all filed in Reno in 1954:

• Antonio Rodriguez was playing the card game, panguingue, in a gambling club when he allegedly stepped on a beer bottle while rising from his chair and, consequently, broke his ankle. He sought $5,000 in general damages and $1,400 in special damages for medical expenses and lost wages.

U.S. West-themed mural on exterior of Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada

• Mrs. Lillian Walker was stepping onto the escalator in Harolds Club to descend from the second to first floors when her shoe allegedly got caught and she wobbled. An alert casino employee grabbed her to keep her from falling, injuring her back and limbs, she and her husband claimed in their subsequent lawsuit.

She demanded $35,000 for bodily pain and nervous shock; her husband asked for $2,250 for medical expenses and compensation for the injury of his wife.

• Also in Harolds Club, a Mrs. McCall allegedly fell while climbing the stairs near the casino’s entrance, suffering “severe” injuries (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 23, 1954).

She and her husband sued, claiming management had failed to keep the stairs safe. She asked for $35,000 for her injuries; her husband requested medical expenses.

While these incidents truly may have happened, it’s interesting that most occurred in the city’s major gambling clubs and not the rinky dink ones.

Sources

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 centavo coins in 25 cent slot machines — an act called slot slugging. Apparently, the coins fit perfectly.

The judge ruled the gambler hadn’t broken any law, dismissed the case and suggested lawmakers revise the statute.

They did. In February 1955, Nevada Governor Charles Russell signed into law AB70, which read in part: “It shall be unlawful to use anything but a coin minted by the U.S. government in a slot machine. Violators may be punished by up to six months in jail and/or a $500 fine.” It also forbade cheating casinos by using marked cards, loaded dice and other devices. Violation would be a misdemeanor.

That didn’t stop people from trying to get away with it, though. At least three more incidents occurred that same year. A 64-year-old Salt Lake City resident was caught and arrested in the rural town of Tonopah for feeding Mexican coins into a one-armed bandit. He’d had a roll of the currency hidden in his coat sleeve. In May, two Californians were arrested for the same infraction in another rural place, Smith Valley. In June, a 30-year-old woman from Texas also was busted in Reno.

An Unexpected Tender

Later in 1955, casino operators began finding specific wooden nickels in their slot machines, which displeased them.

They were pieces that merchants in Sparks (city adjacent to Reno) had handed out as part of the Chamber of Commerce’s celebration of the city’s 50th anniversary; 10,000 had been distributed. They were redeemable for five cents’ worth of merchandise or cash from the chamber.

Some people, though, were gambling with the promotional discs instead. Chamber officials apologized, noting there wasn’t much else they could do.

“The old adage which says, ‘Don’t take in any wooden nickels’ is being bandied all over town. The whole thing is pretty funny to everybody except the harried gambling club owners and to law enforcement agencies,” a United Press reporter noted (Nevada State Journal, Sept. 20, 1955).

Sources

1931

Even after wide-open gambling became legal in Nevada this year, many of the exclusive clubs continued to vet the people who wanted entry. Someone inside the establishment would look through the peephole in the door and if he spotted a familiar face in the group, he’d allow them in.

Photo from pond5.com: The Man Who Spies by mercava2007

The Willows in Reno, Nevada

1931

Despite an influx of newsmen into town to report what gambling now looked like in Nevada’s biggest city immediately following legalization, a move they described as “reviving the days of the pioneer west,” the status quo endured (Nevada State Journal, March 21, 1931).

“There was no wild rush to the gambling resorts and the Saturday night celebration was but little different from that of other Saturday nights. The only apparent difference … was to center interest of the country on the fact that people gambled in Reno and now may continue doing so, without violating a law,” the Reno Evening Gazette reported (March 23, 1931).

After Governor Frederick “Fred” Balzar had signed the bill into law on Thursday, March 19, 1931, the business-as-usual atmosphere primarily was because some forms of gambling already were legal prior to him doing so and other illegal forms operated, albeit underground. High-stakes and roulette games were new, though, and began to appear.

A Minor Snafu

The recent legislation required any casino to obtain a license and pay the necessary fees in advance for every gaming table and/or slot machine they had on site. Any new enterprises, therefore, had to do so immediately, but those already licensed under the previous law could wait until their existing one, good for three months, expired.

In Northern Nevada, a minor snag, however, prevented the Washoe County sheriff from issuing licenses to anyone who’d applied. He didn’t have the necessary forms because the printing company hadn’t delivered them yet. This delay spanned five work days. Finally, on Thursday, March 26, Sheriff E. Russell Trathen dispensed the first license to the proprietor of the Owl Club. By week’s end, he’d issued 64 to various businesses.

In Southern Nevada, the first Las Vegas city gambling license went to the owners of the Northern Club the day after the new gambling law went into effect. The Northern Club, outside of town, received the first Clark County gambling license. Soon, the first lawsuit concerning licensing under the new law would be filed. 

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