1924-1932 The story of the estate of a long-ago Nevada gambler after his passing is strange and unfortunate. John Quinn was a man who’d lost and made large fortunes in gambling and mining stock deals throughout The Silver State and other parts of the West. He’d opened the first saloon-gambling house in the mining town…
1954 Arthur R. Schultz of Ely, Nevada, who’ previously had held a gambling license for slot machines, asked then District Attorney of White Pine County, Jon R. Collins, to rule on whether or not a coin-operated bowling machine (think early version of Skee Ball) constituted a gambling device. Because the machine dispatched tickets that could…
1949 The article, “Las Vegas Gamblers Arming in Control Battle,” ran on the front page of a Los Angeles newspaper in the third week of December, to the chagrin of Nevada gambling regulators, casino owners, officers of the law and other industry representatives. The story reported that in the new iteration of Sin City: •…
1975-1976 Nevada’s infamous “Black Book,” which contains information about the unsavory individuals who are banned from casinos, still exists today but under a different moniker. In 1975, citizen Beni Casselle expressed to the state gaming commission’s chairman “dissatisfaction with the negative connotation inherent thru the constant usage of the catchy-phrase Nevada black book, especially as…
1944-1945 A thug’s confrontation of a casino owner on October 30, 1944 radically altered both of their lives. Andrew Jackson “Jack” Blackman, co-proprietor of the Town House gambling saloon* in Reno, left his business for the night at about 2:30 a.m. and went into the Bank Club** to see his good friend, Walter Parman, the…
1932 At about 4:30 on a Sunday morning, a drunk Bartley “Bart” J. Smithson was target practicing in the Palace Club, shooting at a spittoon and a silver dollar with a 0.38 Smith & Wesson Special. Bullets were flying, some lodging in the building’s rear wall. Smithson was a well-known resident and the proprietor of…
1939 Las Vegas gambling houses and saloons were shut for three hours in observance of Good Friday, at the request of the local churches. It was the first time in the Nevada city’s history that such closures occurred for a day of religious significance. Photo from freeimages.com: by abcdz2000
1956 She wouldn’t budge. C. Johnson was playing a slot machine from a stool that was blocking the aisle in a downtown Reno, Nevada casino. When employees asked the Oakland, California resident to please shift a bit so others could pass, she adamantly refused. They offered to move the game to a spot with a…
1949 Casino owners balked when the question of going on daylight saving time (DST) arose in Nevada in 1949. Gamblers’ Outcries Charles Mapes, owner of the Mapes hotel-casino in Reno, made a few arguments: • “It’s difficult to put on a floor show at 9 p.m. with the sun just going down. A spotlight…
1931 Twenty-six miles southeast of Las Vegas, the United States government, in 1931, developed Boulder City as the place to house men working on the Hoover Dam (originally Boulder Dam). The Bureau of Reclamation required the town to be a model community that afforded a clean living environment. To achieve this, federal legislators officially designated…