1904, 1915, 1936 Against a backdrop of sagebrush and dust in Nevada’s early, remote mining towns, saloons drew men for drinking and gambling. That combination, along with contrarian/antagonistic personalities, sometimes led to disputes that turned violent. Here are three stories in which tempers, as fiery as the summers, got the better of men and ended…
1936 To better understand the experience, Judge Harry D. Landis of Seward, Nebraska purposefully spent 10 summer days, undercover as an inmate, in the Iowa State Penitentiary (since closed). After, when he publicly reported his assessment of the institution, he praised it for allowing inmates to gamble — as the Nevada State Prison did — in…
1936 A thief took the trouble of entering a Los Angeles, California café through a skylight to rob the slot and marble games. But instead of getting the heck out after that was successful, he stayed and played the machines. Unknowingly, their noise alerted a watchman, and the “victim of his own sporting instincts” was arrested…
1936 An $11,800 gambling win (about $205,000 today) was the largest ever in Las Vegas to that point. The payout went to a man named A. “Blacksmith” Sweitzer after playing 21 (blackjack) for two hours, starting with a $5 wager. “He ran a series of five phenomenal blackjack hands, in which he showed two ‘blackjacks’ —…
1936 When brothers, Harold S. Smith, Sr. and Raymond A. Smith, opened a small casino called Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada, the main attraction was mouse roulette “where customers bet their small change on what color or number a scampering rodent would choose to rest up from his running,” wrote Robert Laxalt in Nevada: A…