1954 “If the Streeter suggestion should catch fire and the state took over gambling, it would be the damnedest experiment tried in the United States, and Nevada would have more hoodlums per square block than it has jackrabbits per square mile,” read a non-bylined Nevada State Journal op-ed piece, referring to the idea of Jack…
1954 Due to the 1953 scandal in Wells, Nevada, the Nevada Tax Commission members in June 1954 prohibited open gambling in the town of Jackpot in The Silver State, just south of its border with Idaho, along U.S. Route 93. They worried that gambling 1) couldn’t be policed easily in that remote area and 2)…
1954 Late on a Saturday night in 1954, during the peak of business, an unemployed, 27-year-old railroad hand entered the Stockmen’s Hotel in Elko, Nevada where townspeople, miners, ranchers and tourists congregated to socialize, drink and gamble. Silvus Armandus approached the casino cashier’s cage and demanded: “Hand over your money and don’t make a sound.” The…