1906-1909

An underage young man, Master Wadell, gambled at various games from poker to faro and lost big over the winter of 1906-1907.

His preferred playhouse was the Sixty-Six casino in the mining town of Rhyolite, Nevada. Subsequently, he sued the club’s three owners for what he claimed were his total losses — $10,000 (about $240,000 today).

During the trial in 1909, testimony revealed the proprietors allegedly had cheated repeatedly at various games, thereby swindling him out of large sums. None of that mattered, though, as the question before the court was whether or not a minor had the right to recoup money lost from gambling.

Wadell’s attorney argued that the defendants must repay Wadell as Nevada law prohibits casino proprietors from allowing minors into their establishments, never mind letting them gamble. He said that rule stood regardless of whether the individual said he was of age or looked it.

In the case of Wadell v. the Sixty-Six, the club owners’ counsel argued the law stated if an individual claimed to be 21, he couldn’t, after losing in a gambling house, take advantage of his own fraud and sue to recover his losses. Further, no statute existed that allowed for the recovery of money lost from gambling, he said.

Nevada law at the time — when some kinds of gambling were legal — stated that it was a misdemeanor for any gambling operator to knowingly allow anyone under age 21 to enter or play in their licensed club. (Previously, as of 1869, the legal gambling age had been 17.) To further protect minors, lawmakers in 1897 had allowed for parents of a minor to collect, in a civil action, between $50 and $1,000 from proprietors who’d allowed that child to spend time or play games in their gambling rooms.

In what was the first case of its kind in The Silver State, the jury found in Wadell’s favor in the amount of $2,762.40 (about $66,000 today).

“The decision makes a landmark in Nevada litigation and was one of the most hotly contested and longest cases ever tried in the state,” The Tonopah Sun reported (Reno Evening Gazette, June 8, 1909).

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1940s

A spate of “roadside zoos” opened along various Nevada highways, typically in rural areas, during the late 1940s.

The owners were hustlers who lured unsuspecting tourists onto their grounds with the promise of seeing exotic birds, reptiles and/or wild animals then swindled them out of money via games of chance.

The ruse often involved the three-dice game chuck-a-luck or a variation thereof. Although uncommon in casinos, chuck-a-luck was legal, but “thieving and cheating games” weren’t (Nevada State Journal, April 1, 1945).

Chuck-a-luck’s odds greatly disfavored the players who, on average, lost more than they won — and that was with legitimate dice.

“A shill, posing as another tourist, usually draws the victim into the game which involves eight dice, a “contract” supposed to govern the same, a fast and not always accurate count of the dice by the operator, and a process by which the player loses all when he is no longer able to add to his stake,” explained the Reno Evening Gazette (May 23, 1947).

Numerous travelers complained to local officials about being fleeced at these places. The state governor, the attorney general and other officials despised these enterprises and wanted them eliminated as they stained Nevada’s reputation. The state legislature, in early 1947, passed a law prohibiting these fronts for games that victims couldn’t win, thinking that would eliminate them. However, Nevada police superintendent, Lester C. Moody, didn’t seem to be getting it done from a law enforcement standpoint.

They’re Baaaack. . .

But it didn’t; a minor alteration allowed the racket to continue. Owners simply switched their bait from animals to a museum, which was legal, and continued bilking visitors out of their cash. One such operator was Robert Lee Thomas, who ran such an establishment in Rhyolite off of Highway 95.

“Nevada, noted for its fair play, strong men and decisive action, is lying down while racketeers, most of them of unknown reputation, move in and take a haul of thousands of dollars a day from unsuspecting tourists,” wrote Paul F. Gardner (Nevada State Journal, June 1, 1947).

Victims kept complaining to city and state authorities. The allegations included:

• The racketeers told them they couldn’t stop playing and take their winnings but, instead, had to double up and keep on.

• When they’d protested, menacing men “roughly and threateningly” ejected them from the property (Nevada State Journal, June 1, 1947).

• When they’d said they intended to report them to the attorney general, the con artists warned them via veiled threats to keep quiet.

Mr. and Mrs. Fowler of Los Angeles, California, claimed they’d been taken for $15,500 in traveler’s checks (a $164,500 value today) at Ernest Dennison’s Emigrant Pass establishment on Highway 40 (Interstate 80 today). When the couple entered the place, they were cajoled, on the pretext it was legitimate, into playing Badger the Old Cowboy, a form of chuck-a-luck. In the game, the player throws eight dice hoping to make a high or low total score with them. 

A Palo Alto, California, man asserted he’d lost $60 while participating in a chuck-a-luck game at the Nevada Trading Post on Highway 40; Mr. and Mrs. Hill, Alameda, California, residents, lost $100 in a similar way.

Some victims found themselves without money to return home and wound up stranded.

Stricter policing — revoking the owner’s licenses or arresting those operating illegally — eventually eradicated these roadside con game joints for good.

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1937-1947

The bustle and liveliness of the Ghost Casino have long been dead. All that remains is a specter of the club’s former self in the form of a rundown, abandoned building — a state befitting its home, the now desolate ruins of Rhyolite, Nevada.

Situated in the desert about 120 miles north of Las Vegas, the gambling enterprise began as a railroad depot erected during Rhyolite’s short-lived boom between 1906 and 1911. Named after the igneous rock prevalent there, the town had boomed after prospectors discovered gold nearby. Once the rumor had spread that the precious metal in the region had been exhausted, all but a few residents had deserted Rhyolite.

Nearly three decades later, in 1937, a Las Vegas saloon owner, Norman C. Westmoreland purchased the entire ghost town at a bankruptcy auction. He sank $15,000 (about $250,000 today) into remodeling it into a nightclub and casino, which he named Ghost Casino. Open only during winters, it became a gambling hot spot for visitors from California’s Death Valley.

It “became famous all over the country and was a noted tourist attraction,” the Nevada State Journal noted (May 27, 1947).

Westmoreland ran the Ghost Casino for 10 years until he grew ill and tried to sell it. There weren’t any takers and he died, so his sister, H.H. Heisler, maintained the place as a museum and gift shop into the 1970s. Today, it’s shuttered and fenced in.

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