Gambling in American History

Local casino owner John Wolfram has told me how he sat in a car way out of town, on the Boulder Highway where Flamingo Road began. He was with Sam Boyd, and Sam asked him to look at the cars and count them.  Sam told John that each of those cars was worth a dollar, or some such number. A certain number of cars would pull into a casino if it were located right there. As the story goes, Wolfram said that he was not into that kind of speculation and that he would pass on the offer to buy a piece of the action. Wolfram has been successful in his own smaller casinos; in later years, he owned the Klondike at the far south end of the Strip. Sam Boyd not only was successful, but he became a phenomenon in Las Vegas gambling. But it did not start when Sam’s Town Hotel and Casino opened at the corners of Nellis, Flamingo, and the Boulder Highway; the seeds of success were planted decades before.
Sam Boyd was an “Okie,” born in Enid in 1910. His father did well as the owner of a small town taxicab company, but he died when Sam was only nine years old. Sam’s mother was a nurse who felt that to support her family, she needed a job in a more prosperous location. Eventually, the family relocated to Long Beach, California. Not only did Long Beach have better jobs for those in the medical fields, but it also offered opportunities for other people who liked to “hustle.” And Sam Boyd as a teenager came to like hustling a lot. He worked as a barker and a carnival games operator on the Pike. The lessons he learned on how to draw people into games were lessons he would use throughout his lifetime. He came to use “fun books,” flags, balloons, parties, anything to make the player feel the game was exciting. He also learned that the operator could make a lot of money if he went after the masses—a few dollars from everyone was worth the same as many dollars from a single player. After the carnival gaming experience, Sam Boyd learned all about casino games on one of the gambling ships that worked out of southern California. He dealt each game. He also became a bingo game operator.
He married Mary Neuman in 1931, and the following year their only child, Bill, was born. Sam always emphasized to Bill that his career would be much better if he received a formal college education. Bill got an undergraduate education, and then he received a law degree. His “enhanced” career began in a law office, but soon he found that he could be helpful as the attorney for his father’s casino interests, and then he could be even more helpful as a casino executive himself. He eventually helped the Boyd organization make the transition to a corporate property with interests in many locations besides Las Vegas.
In the late 1930s, Sam Boyd spent five years in Hawaii involved with a variety of bingo establishments. In those short years he came to appreciate the Hawaiian population with its Asian heritage and love for gambling. This appreciation became the nexus of his marketing efforts when he set up operations in Las Vegas several years later.
Sam came to Las Vegas in 1941, in response to a federal crackdown on gambling in California. His first jobs were in small casinos on Fremont Street. He went on to work at the El Rancho Vegas, the first casino on the Las Vegas Strip. After a tour of duty with the army in World War II, he was employed at the Flamingo, after “Bugsy” Siegel. He also worked in northern Nevada at Lake Tahoe. His son, while a student at the University of Nevada in Reno, worked with him during summers. Sam also held positions at the Sahara and the Thunderbird. Sam Boyd loved working, and he was very diligent about saving as much of his salary as possible. In 1952, he had a chance to buy 1 percent of the Sahara. Hard work habits now became a compulsion. Sam purchased more shares when the Sahara developed the Mint downtown. He kept working and saving.  In 1962, Sam, his son, and two others purchased the casino that became the El Dorado in downtown Henderson. In 1971, he became a partner in the Union Plaza casino at the end of Fremont Street. There he was innovative, as he used women as dealers at blackjack games. His goal was to build a player base. He also brought musical plays onto the property.
Sam Boyd took his money out of the Plaza so that he could become the major investor in the California Hotel just off Fremont Street. Quickly the California Hotel became the venue for Hawaiian players. His controlling interests in the California and the property in Henderson necessitated that he drive the thirteen miles that separated the two properties each day. (This distance is significant to me, as the Boyds sponsored an official minimarathon race in which I participated, between the doors of the two hotels.) It was on one of these drives that he realized there might be a market among the many cars that were on Boulder Highway each day.
Realtor Chuck Ruthe was on the board of directors of Boyd Casinos and used his expertise to put together the land deal that allowed the construction of Sam’s Town and its opening in 1979. Many establishments had previously tried to target local gamblers for their market—most were on Fremont Street, but there was also the Showboat, at the top of Boulder Highway. The Sam Boyd touch, however, made his efforts to get the local gamblers especially lucrative. His Sam’s Town ushered in a new genre of Las Vegas casino—the locals’ casino. Without Sam’s Town showing the way, it is unlikely there would have been an Arizona Charlie’s, Santa Fe, Texas, Boulder Station, Fiesta, or Sunset Station. As the 1980s went on, however, Sam Boyd realized that the old management styles would not be totally effective if Boyd’s were to expand into a public company and go into new jurisdictions. He yielded corporate power to his son and enjoyed his final years as an elder statesman representing the days of the personal touch in Las Vegas. He was able to see his company set higher goals under Bill’s leadership. Sam Boyd died in 1992 before the company entered the Tunica, Mississippi, market with the largest hotel in the state, established a riverboat in Missouri, and made a management agreement with a large casino for the Choctaw tribe in Mississippi.

Boulder City, Nevada, is the only community in the state of Nevada where gambling is not permitted in any form. The small city of about 15,000 residents lies twenty-five miles southeast of Las Vegas and abuts the Colorado River. Boulder City was not part of Wild West mining days of the Silver State. Rather, it was a government creation, established in 1931 as a city to house workers for the building of the Hoover Dam. The Boulder Dam Project had been authorized by an act of Congress in 1928. Almost immediately thereafter, the state of Nevada and the federal government sought to exercise their separate authority over the parcel of land selected for a new workers’ community. The federal government, even in the years right before Nevada legalized casinos in 1931, recognized the state as a rogue among the members of the union. Gambling was openly operating in Las Vegas, as were houses of prostitution, which actually were in conformity with the local law. Las Vegas was also considered to be the location where violations of the national prohibition against alcoholic beverages were most apparent.  In 1929, some thought was given to making Las Vegas the base camp for the construction workers. After Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur visited the “sin city,” however, he recoiled at the notion of workers living among saloons and prostitutes and being tempted to spend their salaries in casinos. Wilbur declared that a “model” community be constructed closer to the site of the construction.
Secretary Wilbur invoked the provisions of the Reclamation Act of 1902 and created a 144-square-mile enclave out of unappropriated federal lands surrounding the site of the dam. The enclave included a town site for Boulder City. The city was made a federal reservation much in the same legal form as the Native American reservations of the same era. Federal law dominated city life, and Nevada law was unenforceable. A prohibition against liquor was put firmly into place and remained in place even after the 21st amendment ended national prohibition in 1933. Prostitution was strictly forbidden, as was gambling, even though it was soon made completely legal by the Nevada legislature.
Boulder City, the first “planned community” of the twentieth century, was to be an isolated oasis of morality and “quality life,” albeit surrounded by the many diversions of Nevada society. Author Dennis McBride writes that “everything was designed and blueprinted long before the first spadeful of earth was turned at the site. The government decided how many people would live in Boulder City, and which businesses would be allowed to operate” (McBride 1981, 16–17). The city was built on desolate desert lands. It transformed the lands into a hospitable environment for workers who desperately needed quarters for themselves and their families. The same consortium of companies that was chosen to build the dam built the city. They hired an architect to lay out the streets. He did so and also designated lands for parks and golf courses. The architect incorporated desert landscaping into his plan. The need for quick construction led to modifications, however, and the golf course idea was abandoned. Also, the almost unbearable heat prompted the government to bring in a landscape gardener, aptly named Wilbur Weed, to begin a project of planting grasses, shrubbery, and trees everywhere. He selected the correct species of each after much study, and miraculously, his plantings survived to bring a measure of coolness and shade to the streets of the community. The plantings also broke up the wind and dust storms that had otherwise swept through the town as a result of all the construction activity. The autocratic city managers appointed by federal authorities did not let the landscape gardener’s work go unnoticed. They decreed that all residents would have to maintain their lawn and garden areas, and if they did not, the city would do so and deduct the cost from the residents’ wages at the dam.
The government decided that Boulder City would not be just a place for workers to live temporarily but that it would be a true community. A variety of civic institutions and organizations was sponsored, and churches were invited to join the community. By 1932, four were constructed and well attended.
Dennis McBride writes that by the end of 1932, most of Boulder’s principal buildings were finished, and her institutions established. The streets were paved, the boulevards and parks landscaped. There were no more tent neighborhoods; hundreds of houses stood in monotonous rows, each identical to the next. Plaster on the new Bureau of Reclamation Administration Building, the dormitory, and the Municipal Building was smooth and white, reflecting the powerful afternoon sun. Fords, Chevys, and other working-class cars lined the streets. New stores in the business district displayed goods behind big polished windows. Arcades with graceful plaster arches shaded the downtown sidewalks…. Where before there had been barren desert, there was now a modern American city. Wives shopped in clean, well-supplied stores and ate lunch in fine cafes; their husbands worked all week, and brought home a good paycheck.  Children went to school taught by bright innovative teachers, and played on green, front lawns and in shady parks. While families in the rest of America went hungry, the people who lived in Boulder City on the federal reservation lived quiet, insulated domestic lives. Boulder today still looks remarkably like it did fifty years ago.
A fence surrounded the city, with a gate manned by guards who would only let in workers and residents, who had to carry passes. Eventually over 5,000 workers lived in the dam-building community. The decision of Secretary Wilbur to create the enclave of “clean living” had several consequences for the development of Las Vegas as a gambling Mecca. First, by banning gambling and other “entertainment” from the vicinity of the dam, Wilbur ensured that a large number of federal employees would venture into Las Vegas and support its newly legalized casinos in the 1930s. Further, the restrictions on life in Boulder City—in terms of entrance and exit from the town—precluded a development of hotel accommodations until well into the construction schedule. Only one hotel was available during construction. Accommodations developed in Las Vegas instead. Moreover, as a private center of enterprise, Las Vegas attracted a share of the capital resources that were directed into the construction project. Las Vegas became a major transportation center for materials because enterprise was not allowed to develop in Boulder City.
When the Hoover Dam project was completed, Boulder City declined in population as workers moved away. The town persisted as a government center during the years of World War II, however, as a military force was stationed in the area to guard the dam, considered by authorities to be a target for the Japanese enemy. After the war, the city began to attract workers of the newly developing casino industry of Las Vegas. In the 1950s, the residents moved to have the city removed from federal control. In 1958, for the very first time, residents were permitted to vote for local governing officials. First a commission was elected to write a home rule charter for the city. After a charter was written, it was approved by a vote of the citizens. Then in 1960, Congress passed legislation releasing the land for private sale to the citizens whose city now came under the jurisdiction of the state of Nevada. The first charter banned both gambling and hard alcoholic beverages, probably in recognition that the charter would not become effective unless ratified in an act of Congress. The state of Nevada had banned prostitution in Clark County (the county including both Las Vegas and Boulder City), so this was no longer an issue. After the city emerged as a home rule town under Nevada law, there were several attempts to legalize both alcohol and gambling. In 1958, the city charter was amended to allow the sale of alcohol both by the bottle and by the glass. In vote after vote, however, the residents have remained firm in the position that they do not want gambling. This adamant standing does not mean that residents do not frequent casinos. The residents, now 15,000 strong, patronize two major casino complexes on their borders; one at the Railroad Pass area on the road to Las Vegas and another on a private enclave of land outside the city limits on the road to the dam and the Arizona state line.
As a resident of nearby Las Vegas, I can attest that Boulder City, the state’s only nongambling city, has maintained much of the culture that was imposed upon the city by its federal mentors during the construction of the dam. The city seeks to be a quiet community with good schools and churches, a city that enjoys the very green parks and tree-lined streets cultivated by the federal government in the 1930s. The city adopted antigrowth policies in the 1960s and 1970s and maintains a policy of limited and controlled growth. The latter policies help maintain high values of residential properties. They also maintain a buffer to the urban sprawl prevalent throughout the rest of the Las Vegas metropolitan area. A small town character prevails. Within this atmosphere there are events such as the autumn art fair that attracts both artists and art patrons from throughout the southwestern United States. The city is also a tourist center, as it is the first motel area near Hoover Dam and the Lake Mead recreational area that was created with the completion of the dam in the 1930s. Visitors to the city who stay in the local motels have access to the many entertainment venues of the Las Vegas area, while at the same time they can enjoy quiet walks through uncrowded green parks beneath trees, much as if they were in a small Midwestern city.

The remote, landlocked, mountainous country of Bolivia is not at all distinguished for its gambling activities. The preponderance of the almost 8 million citizens are of indigenous heritage and do not live prosperous lives. The country has had a lottery, as do all of the independent countries of South America, and there is pari-mutuel racing.
Although casinos do not operate within the confines of a legal framework, a large portion of the population of the national city of La Paz has nevertheless had occasion to visit local casinos. Casino owners have been operating casinos for years on a quasi-legal basis. In 1993, the president issued an executive order declaring the facilities to be illegal. A 1994 city statute in La Paz permitted lotteries, however, and local entrepreneurs used it as a ruse for opening casinos. After a federal raid had closed down thirteen of the country’s casinos, the mayor of La Paz authorized the opening of two in the city, holding that the casino games were municipally approved lotteries. The wrangling between the city and national authorities has scared off many potential foreign investors. As a result, pressure has increased for the National Congress to take action on a casino bill that was first introduced in 1991. No action was taken before the end of the twentieth century, and matters of the casino front remain in limbo.