1900-1906 A snapshot of six early years of one popular gambling-saloon in Reno, Nevada spotlights some of the problems these establishments routinely faced: on-site crime, financial troubles, crooked games and changes in both owners and gambling operators. Though the Louvre debuted in May 1897* at 22 E. Commercial Row in the then-called Marshall Building, it…
1903 “Accommodation for Johnny Ox,” a gambling-related headline in the Nevada State Journal, March 17, 1903, puzzled us. Curious (read: obsessive), we set out to decipher it. The brief news item relayed two gambling saloons in Reno — the Louvre and the Oberon — planned to build an upper level onto their one-story building in which…
1935 Stanford University’s (California) Indians and Southern Methodist University’s (Texas) Mustangs were to vie in the Rose Bowl football game on New Year’s Day, and this meant trains of people traveling from The Lone Star State to Pasadena. Texas officials warned any gamblers with ideas of operating games of chance on those trains that special agents will…
1888 When select games of chance were legal in Nevada, so many youths under age 21 regularly were frequenting the gambling clubs (which was illegal) that the police threatened to make an example of some of them. Photo from freeimages.com, by Craig Matchett