1954

Due to the 1953 scandal in Wells, Nevada, the state tax commissioners in June 1954 prohibited open gambling in the town of Jackpot, just south of the Nevada-Idaho border along U.S. Route 93.

They worried that gambling 1) couldn’t be policed easily in that remote area and 2) might cause resentment among Twin Falls residents because Idaho had outlawed its only legal gambling — slot machines — earlier that year.

In July, Nevada banned gambling, too, in Wells (further south on the 93).

1961

Dick Seller boasted that, within a year, a new luxury gambling resort would be built 100 miles from civilization, on a 100-acre parcel he owned (and named Holiday) in Humboldt County in Nevada’s desert near Highway 140 and the Oregon border.

As for whether it would be successful, he said, “Look at Jackpot,” referring to the popular Nevada gambling town at the Idaho border. “That just grew in the desert. This is a planned jackpot, a real jackpot — a bonanza” (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 27, 1961). Yet Seller’s project never came to fruition.