1958 Reverend Maurice D. Tulloch, 50, a Kansas man, gave up his Baptist ministry for shilling in a Nevada casino. Feeling as though his life was suffocating him, a month earlier he’d walked out of a church seminar and had gone to a bus station where he’d heard a woman purchase a ticket to Las…
1948-1950 Tragedy struck when the wife of famed American novelist, John Steinbeck, was in Reno, Nevada for a quickie divorce from him after 5½ years of marriage. In 1948, while establishing residency in The Biggest Little City, Gwyndolyn “Gwyn” Conger Steinbeck developed a relationship with Leonard Wolff, a wealthy, former U.S. Army Air Forces bombardier…
Today In the U.S. we call them slot machines and one-armed bandits, but in Australia, they’re pokies and in the United Kingdom, fruit machines. Other names? Photo from freeimages.com: by Tijmen van Dobbenburgh
1926-present By 1963, major casino owners in Reno, Nevada thought the downtown fixture was outdated and ugly compared to their modern buildings on Virginia Street. They even offered to pay for it and its maintenance for five years. That was the Reno Arch, a famous city landmark. They probably had a point. The arch originally…
1960 Bookies throughout Nevada had been taking wagers right and left on who’d win the upcoming U.S. presidential election — Senator John F. Kennedy (Dem.) or Vice President Richard Nixon (Rep.). Suddenly, in November, they were forced to stop doing so when a news story was published about the forgotten Silver State law of 1919…
1958-1961 The debut of topless showgirls in Las Vegas roused disapproval — not surprising given it occurred early in the Leave it to Beaver era. The Stardust was the first to abandon bras and tops, doing so when it unveiled a show featuring the Bluebell Girls for the hotel-casino’s 1958 grand opening on The Strip.…
1860s & 1870s In Virginia City, Nevada’s heyday, gold miners and magnates alike sought out R&R — gambling, hot springs soaking and dining — at the nearby Steamboat Springs resort south of Reno, a stop on the Virginia & Truckee Railway. Hundreds of people visited daily. “It was there that the Comstock kings ate and…
1935 When two United States state governors made a friendly bet, neither knew it would become problematic. They wagered each other their state would win the upcoming football rivalry between the Minnesota Golden Gophers, a national powerhouse, and the Iowa Hawkeyes, the loser having to award the other a prize hog. Minnesota beat Iowa, 13…