Sign denoting a faro bank inside

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 — it’s a fast-action, one-deck card game in which innumerable players compete against a bank rather than one another. (Learn the rules of faro and play.) 

The game, also called farobank, has been around since the Middle Ages, but the version played in the U.S. sprang from 17th century France. Le faro is French for “pharaoh,” taken from the picture on the back of the cards used in the game.

Faro grew in popularity during the 19th century in America where, oftentimes, dealers traveled with their equipment, offering a bank for games where they could.

It was a common pastime in The Silver State’s mining towns, such as Virginia City. Nevadans referred to it as “bucking the tiger,” which derived from the picture of a tiger displayed on walls outside saloons denoting a faro bank inside.

During Prohibition, much of gambling nationwide went underground. Whereas most games resurfaced after ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933 — poker, blackjack, slot machines and more — faro didn’t.

“Despite its long history, in modern times even references to the game of faro have all but disappeared. For example, books, Western films, and popular Western TV shows of the 1970s all disregarded faro in favor of poker,” wrote the authors of In the Pursuit of Winning.

Faro lived its last days in Nevada. By the 1950s, only a few casinos offered it. One was the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas, which made the game available through 1955. People could play it in Reno until 1958 at the Ramada Hotel Casino and until 1964 at the Golden Hotel.

Too Little Profit

What led to faro’s demise? Primarily, the small house edge on it, experts speculate. Ultimately, casinos preferred games that afforded them a greater margin. Because faro favored players more than any other game of chance, they could win a lot, as the following quote suggests.

“The men who “buck the tiger” are waxing fat these days,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Oct. 20, 1904). “It is stated that there is not a gambling house in town that is making money. This is not because the games are not being played, for every night the rooms are crowded and each table is surrounded by eager players. The fact is the players are winning, steadily.”

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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.

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Mexico’s Monte Carlo and Sunset Inn

1913-1929

With various state bans on gambling and, later, a nationwide prohibition against liquor, many Americans, particularly wealthy Southern Californians, traveled to casinos in Mexican border cities to play and imbibe.

“The great hegira* is in, and already these towns are filled to the limit with throngs of the thirsty, willing to pay big sums for the pleasures banned by law on American soil,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (March 30, 1920).

Here are some casinos that lured U.S. citizens across the border to do what they legally couldn’t at home:

In Calexico

• Owl (Tecolote) Café and Theatre: Large but unadorned, “an immense barn-like structure,” the Owl boasted nearly 40 tables for keno, faro and poker along with many roulette wheels (The Bakersfield Californian, Feb. 10, 1920). Advertisements for the gaming resort touted: “Both night and day, across the way, you will never find closed, the Owl Café.” Three Bakersfield, California, saloon and brothel owners — Marvin Allen, Frank Beyer and Carl Withington — or ABC Corp., opened the Owl around 1913. Seven years later, a fire that raged for three hours burned it down.

“The destruction of the Owl leaves one large gambling house in Mexicali, a Chinese establishment where many of the games are beyond the ken** of the average American,” reported The Bakersfield Californian (Feb. 10, 1920).

In Mexicali

• Casino de Mexicali: Following the conflagration of the Owl, Governor Esteban Cantu of Baja, California, built and oversaw in his capital city the upscale Casino de Mexicali, which also was open 24/7. Luxuriously appointed, the entire top floor was divided into suites equipped with games for wagering. Cantu charged customers an initial $250 membership tax (about $2,950 today) and a $20 monthly fee. In the first month alone, 2,000 people had joined. In its early days, the Casino de Mexicali drew about 25,000 to 30,000 Americans per day.

“The project stood Cantu an even million dollars before a wheel turned,” noted the Reno Evening Gazette (March 30, 1920).

In Tijuana

• Feria Típica: This traditional fair, the brainchild of Antonio Elosúa, offered gambling in the forms of cockfighting, bullfighting, bull baiting and horse racing along with folk dancing and Mexican food and drink. It debuted in 1915 with the slogan: “Where Everything Goes and Where Everyone Goes.”
• Monte Carlo: Elosúa opened this casino the following year. Adjacent to the Feria Típica’s open-air arena, it offered cards and dice table games, slot machines and roulette wheels. By 1917, ABC Corp. had bought out all of Elosúa’s holdings.
• Sunset Inn: ABC Corp. and Jim Coffroth built in 1920 this new $1 million casino with a balcony that overlooked the racetrack. The proprietors added to the casino’s events schedule many of the feria’s most popular exhibitions, like bullfighting.

“To lure and keep gamblers on the property, the new Monte Carlo served decent enough 75-cent meals and the dance hall stayed open all night,” wrote Lawrence D. Taylor (San Diego Historical Society Quarterly, Summer 2002).

• Agua Caliente Casino and Hotel: Another trio of Americans — Wirt G. Bowman, Baron Long and James N. Crofton — built this ornate, $10 million, Spanish-style resort that boasted a casino offering faro, roulette and baccarat, horse and greyhound racing among other recreational amenities. Four-person bungalows allowed for gambling in private. Located six miles south of the border near the hot spring, the property opened in two phases, in 1928 and 1929. During its heyday, Agua Caliente attracted a slew of tourists, among them famous Hollywood stars.

“American cupidity has enriched the gamblers of Augua [sic] Caliente more than $4 million in the past 10 months. The Old West in its heyday never saw such gambling as is being done at Augua Caliente these days,” reported The Kokomo Tribune (June 7, 1929).

The end of Prohibition curtailed the throngs of U.S. citizens visiting Mexico for pleasures.

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*A flight or journey to a more desirable or congenial place
**Understanding or knowledge

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