Puerto Rico’s Ponce Palm Sunday Massacre—The Island’s Darkest Day

 

On Palm Sunday 1939 Puerto Rican Nationalist Cadets line up in their spiffy uniforms for a protest march in the city of Ponce.  Ahead is a small detachment of police.  They may have been unaware of units behind them and on side streets as they stepped off.

Note—This is the sort of already obscured history Trump wants to ban by anti-DEI fiat. Just reading this spits in they eye of the tyrant. 

 

It started with a lovely Palm Sunday morning for a stroll through Ponce, Puerto Rico. It ended with 19 dead and over 200 badly injured when the Insular Police acting on the direct and explicit orders of the Governor, General Blanton C. Winship opened fire on a peaceful parade led by Cadets of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. The police surrounded the marchers and fired from all sides using machine guns, Thompson sub-machine guns, rifles, pistols, and tear gas grenades. They fired not only on marchers, but directly into the bystanders who were watching the parade. After the initial fusillade, firing continued for 15 minutes as police chased down survivors, executing some of the wounded as they lay on the ground, beating others. Puerto Ricans would ever after remember March 21, 1937 as the Ponce Massacre. 

 

General Nelson A. Miles, the veteran Indian fighter, led a nearly bloodless invasion of Puerto Rico during the Spanish American War. Because of the press stirred up hoo-ha in support of Cuban Revolutionaries, that island had to be granted independence after the war, albeit with heavy strings attached. Not so the other fruit plucked from feeble Spain—the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Those the United States had every intention to keep as part of a new, un-declared empire. 

 

In the Philippines the Army quickly turned on its erstwhile allies in a local independence movement and crushed a rebellion by them and then fought an extended guerilla campaign against Islamic Moro rebels on the southern islands. In Puerto Rico, there was no armed opposition. But there was resentment as the first American Governor, Charles Herbert Allen, looted the island’s treasury, funneled money to American contractors, railroad operators, and sugar planters while refusing to build roads, schools, or infrastructure for the people. American interests gobbled up agricultural land for sugar plantations, and the population sank deeper into poverty and deprivation than they ever had under Spanish rule. After looting the territory and setting up a network of plantations, Allen resigned to return to the U.S. where he became fabulously wealthy as the founder of largest sugar-refining company in the world, the American Sugar Refining Company, now known as Domino Sugar.

 

By 1914 the nearly powerless Puerto Rican House of Delegates voted unanimously for independence from the United States. Their action was ignored. But in 1917 the U.S. Congress acted unilaterally to make Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens. Islanders noted that the first “benefit” of citizenship was the imposition of draft boards to funnel troops to World War I. 

 

Nationalists first began organizing in 1917 in protest to the citizenship move. The earliest meetings were held in Ponce forming the Asociación Nacionalista de Ponce (Ponce Nationalist Association) and founding the newspaper El Nacionalista. Other nationalist or pro-independence groups sprang up elsewhere on the island. By 1924 these merged into the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. 

 

Pedro Albizu Campost, leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.
 

The Party’s early years were marked by dissension, schism, and other difficulties. By 1930 Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, a militant leader, emerged as party President. 

 

The Great Depression hit Puerto Rico even harder than the continental United States. Unemployment soared, but little New Deal relief reached the population and what aid did come was often skimmed by corrupt American administrators and local politicians. Strikes rattled the sugar industry. The Nationalist Party, however, was not able to translate popular discontent to electoral victories. It remained a minority party in the House of Delegates. Campos suspected the honesty of elections. 

 

Campos organized the Cadets, a youth branch somewhat similar to Scouts, and the Hijas de la Libertad (Daughters of Freedom), the women’s branch, both of which played leading rolls in increasing street demonstrations. 

 

By 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt, responding to complaints by plantation owners and the sugar interests, was alarmed by what they described as near social anarchy. He appointed a new Governor with vague instructions to get things under control. His choice, General Winship could not have been more disastrous. Winship was a Georgia native born in 1869 when the memories of the Civil War were still raw. He was practicing law when the Spanish American War broke out and immediately enlisted in a Georgia Volunteer regiment. He liked his taste of military life and joined the Regular Army serving in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps as a lawyer. But the sound of trumpets lured him from his law books. He served on active field duty with General John J. Pershing in the campaign against Poncho Villa in Mexico and then in France with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). There he commanded troops under fire and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star. 

 

                                     Governor Blanton C. Winship ordered the attack.
 

In peace time he served as Calvin Coolidge’s military aid and then capped off his career as Judge Advocate General from 1931 to his retirement in 1933. 

 

Despite what must have looked like an impressive resume, Winship was a poor choice for the delicate assignment handed him on several counts. He was by nature a martinet and autocrat. He had, for a lawyer, contempt for civilian leadership. And as a Southerner he disdained the brown skinned, Catholic people he was sent to govern. He considered them little better than savages and incapable of self-government. 

 

Winship arrived in Puerto Rico with Colonel Francis Riggs to act as his chief of police, a tip off to the repression to come. Riggs had already been an advisor to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. He went about organizing the Insular Police, a militia under the Governor’s direct command and control as a heavily armed paramilitary force. He armed them with new weapons including sub machine guns and both .30 caliber and .50 caliber machine guns in addition to Army issue 1903 Springfield rifles and Colt .45 automatic pistols. Then they were turned loose to harass strikers and street demonstrators. 

 

Things rapidly came to a head in 1935 when Insular Police shot and killed four Nationalist Party students and a bystander at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. Reports were that some of the victims were executed by shots to the head at close range. The incident became known as the Río Piedras Massacre. 

 

For Campos, it was the last straw. He declared that his party would no longer compete in “U.S. controlled elections” and called for armed struggle to expel the Americans. In retaliation for the killings on February 23, 1936 two members of the Cadets, Hiram Rosado and Elías Beauchamp, assassinated Col. Riggs in San Juan as he returned home from church. Both were quickly apprehended and executed without trial at police headquarters. Gov. Winship ordered the leadership of the Nationalist Party rounded up. Campos and several others were charged with sedition and conspiracy to overthrow the government. They were taken to Boston, the Federal District Court with jurisdiction over Puerto Rico and tried before a jury impaneled on the island. The trial ended in a hung jury as little evidence was presented linking Campos and the others to the assassination.  A second jury, consisting only of Anglo residents of Puerto Rico, convicted all but one defendant and sentenced the rest to ten years in prison. 

 

Back on the island, Winship ordered the suppression of any protests to the sentences. Despite this the Cadets who planned the Palm Sunday March in 1937 had reason to be hopeful of a peaceful protest.

 

 Ponce was generally friendly to the Nationalists. They requested, and were quickly granted a parade permit by Mayor José Tormos Diego. The request was considered a courtesy since a 1927 court decision had ruled that streets and plazas were open and free to political and social gatherings. When Winship heard that the permit had been issued, he exploded. He called in his new Chief of Police, Colonel Enrique de Orbeta, and gave him orders to proceed at once to Ponce with a strong force to prevent any demonstration, “by all means necessary.” 

 

 Oberta considered those orders a carte blanch to use overwhelming lethal force. He arrived in town with heavily armed police units drawn from around the island. He would not trust local officers with this duty. 

 

The Cadets and their followers, as well as a crowd of bystanders, assembled with no knowledge that their permit had been rescinded. The police chief of the municipality, Juan Diaz, was positioned in front of the assembling marchers with 14 men, another local chief and a sergeant led nine men with Thompson sub machine guns at the rear. Chief of Police Antonio Bernardi, heading 11 policemen armed with machine guns, stood on the east and another group of 12 police, armed with rifles, was placed to the west. Scores of additional police, perhaps totally 200, were in reserve. 

 

Cadet leader Tomás López de Victoria could see the line of police ahead of him. It is unclear if he was aware of the more heavily armed police to his flanks and rear. At the appointed hour he determined to step off following the singing of the patriotic song La Borinqueña following the flag bearer. They had hardly taken a step when police opened fire with a murderous volley. The flag bearer was killed instantly. Seventeen year old Carmen Fernández took up the banner and was shot and gravely injured. Police continued to pour fire into the crowd from all sides as people scrambled for their lives. 

 

Police turned their fire on bystanders stitching the facades of the buildings with bullet holes from Thompson sub-machine guns and rifle fire.  
 

They also turned automatic fire directly into the bystanders along the building walls of the street, riddling the facades with bullet holes and leaving victims in heaps in front of them. After the sustained vollies, firing became sporadic as police chased down those trying to flee or executed some of the scores of wounded littering the ground in the confined area. It took nearly a quarter of an hour before the last shot was fired. 150 uninjured or lightly injured demonstrators and bystanders were arrested but ultimately released on bail. 

 

In the wild cross fire it was no surprise that two police were killed and several injured. These deaths and injuries would be used in Winship’s report to his superiors at the Department of the Interior to claim that they were victims of shots fired by marchers precipitating the gunfight. This story was quickly picked up by the American press which painted the Governor as a hero for suppressing a “bloody insurrection.” 

 

Colonel Enrique de Orbeta in white and Insular Police survey the aftermath of the massacre with a dead Nationalist at their feet.  Note the automatic weapons of the police.
 

But that story began to unravel almost immediately. No weapons were found on or near any of the victims. All had been unarmed. Many had been shot in the back. Survivors and witnesses from nearby buildings who were not involved quickly discounted the official version. The local District Attorney opened an investigation into the killings but came under intense direct pressure from Winship who ordered the prosecutor’s office to charge more Nationalists and Cadets and issued a direct order that no police officer be charged. The prosecutor resigned in protest. 

 

An official Puerto Rican government investigation was launched, but naturally under the control of Winship made no conclusions. 

 

Relatives and survivors of the massacre posed in front of the bullet ridden headquarters of the Nationalist Party.  Just standing for this picture was a dangerous act of defiance.   

 

Puerto Rican Senator Luis Muñoz Marin, a leading political figure and Nationalist opponent, went to Ponce to personally investigate the shootings. There he was shown unpublished photographs taken by journalist Carlos Torres Morales of El Imparcill from the window of a building overlooking the scene which clearly showed police firing directly into the crowds of bystanders. These two photographs had not been seen by either of the two previous investigations. Those photos helped convince the United States Commission on Civil Rights to launch its own investigation spearheaded by Arthur Garfield Hayes of the American Civil Liberties Union assisted by a panel of distinguished Puerto Ricans. 

 

The Hayes commission concluded that the police had behaved as a mob and committed a massacre. The report created an uproar in Congress which began its own investigation. There were cries for the police on the scene, Chief Orbeta, and Winship to be indicted. But Winship also had friends in Congress.

 

Before any charges could be brought against him, new legislation was passed exempting government officials from prosecution for crimes committed in the line of their official duties. In the end neither Winship nor any police were ever charged. 

 

On July 25, 1938 Winship decided to mark the 40th anniversary of the American landings in Puerto Rico not, as was customary, with low key observations in the capital of San Juan, but in Ponce to show that he had smashed the Nationalists and now “owned the town.” Shots were fired at the reviewing stand from which he was watching the parade. The governor survived the assassination attempt but in the wild shootout that followed two people, including a police officer, were killed and 36 others wounded. 

 

In July 1938 Gov. Winship, second from right, survived bullets fired at the reviewing stand of a military parade in Ponce to commemorate the 40th anniversary of of the American landing on the island in the Spanish American War.

 

The following year, responding to complaints of dictatorial rule from islanders and increasing pressure from Congress, President Roosevelt summarily removed Winship from his post. It was not, however, the end of his career. When World War II broke out Winship returned to active duty in the Army and was placed in charge of prosecution of suspected Nazi saboteurs on the Home Front. In 1944 at the age of 72 and the oldest active duty soldier in the Army, he retired as a Major General. 

 

Rex Tugwell, one of FDR’s right hand men in the New Deal, was appointed as Governor in an attempt to restore good relations between the people and the U.S. Tugwell issued several pardons to long time nationalist leaders. In cooperation with Luis Muñoz Marin, who had founded a new, pro-US political party, the Partido Popular Democratico (Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico), he pursued a policy of reform and during World War II instituted many New Deal-like social programs and infrastructure improvements. 

 

Marin and his PPD became the dominant political party in Puerto Rico. The Nationalists did not fare so well. They really had been crippled by Winship’s repression and by the rising popularity of Marin’s party. 

 

After the war, however, Nationalists, still committed to Campos’s call for armed struggle for independence, stepped up their activity. In 1948 as Senate leader Marin ushered in the draconian Law 53 or Ley de la Mordaza (gag law.) Under this law it became a crime “to own or display a Puerto Rican flag anywhere, even in one’s own home; to speak against the U.S. government; to speak in favor of Puerto Rican independence; to print, publish, sell, or exhibit any material intended to paralyze or destroy the insular government; or to organize any society, group, or assembly of people with a similar destructive intent.” Those accused of violations could be sentenced to ten years in prison, a fine of $10,000, or both. 

 

Marin and his party would use this law ruthlessly not only against armed Nationalist militants, but sympathizers, dissidents of any kind, and even those who did not vote for the PPD. Meanwhile Marin had wrung from Congress a law allowing the direct election of the next governor by the people. Marin knew that he would be elected. And he was. He officially took office on January 2, 1949 and served sixteen years—four terms as Governor. 

 

In 1950 Nationalists at Campo’s order initiated an armed uprising beginning with an attack on the Governor’s Palace on October 30. Attacks occurred across the island, but Marin quickly suppressed the uprising. Campos and the Nationalist leadership were soon rounded up, but under Law 53 so were thousands who were peripherally sympathetic. 

 

Would-be Truman assassin Oscar Collazo lies dead at the steps to Blair House in Washington in 1950.
 

As part of the uprising On November 1, 1950, Griselio Torresola and Óscar Collazo unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate President Harry S. Truman, who was staying at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. 

 

In 1952 Puerto Rican voters overwhelmingly approved a new status the Estado Libre Associado (Free State Association), commonly called Commonwealth Status, with a high degree of self-rule while remaining in association with the U.S. and the people retaining U.S. citizenship. 

 

In 1954 four nationalists opened fire on Congress while in session, wounding six, one critically. It was one of the last major hurrahs of the old Nationalist party. 

 

The party split in 1955 with a majority faction rejecting armed struggle. Most pro-independence advocates now belong to other groups, not the mere shadow of the Nationalist Party. For his part Campos spent most of the rest of his life in prison, his health deteriorating. He may have been among the Puerto Rican prison hospital inmates who were subjected to massive overdoses of radiation in a secret research project in the ‘50s and ‘60s. 

 

On November 15, 1964, on the brink of death, Campos was pardoned by Governor Marin. He died on April 21, 1965 in San Juan. Hundreds of thousands attended his funeral. 

 

Ideological followers of Campos continued activity and were blamed for a rash of pipe bombings in Chicago and elsewhere into the 1970’s. 

 

Today, support for independence has dwindled. Recent elections have brought to power a party that, in theory at least, supports statehood. In a 2012 referendum voters rejected the continuance of commonwealth status overwhelmingly and a majority favored statehood. Legislation was signed by President Obama in 2014 for a final, binding referendum on a future status. The was vote was held during the November 3, 2020 General Elections. 

 

The ballot asked one question: “Should Puerto Rico be admitted immediately into the Union as a State?” The results showed that 52 percent of Puerto Rico voters answered yes. 

 

Plans were complicated by Puerto Rico’s debt crisis which threatened to bankrupt the island unless some sort of aid and permission for debt restructuring passed a hostile Republican led Congress. And then a devastating earthquake and multiple hurricanes  ravaged the island. Donald Trump famously held up approved emergency aid for the island in retribution for criticism of him by San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.  Years after the disasters President Joe Biden ordered the long delayed aid paid. 

 

In the US the Republican Party was long an advocate for Puerto Rican statehood. But the realization that statehood would probably result in the election of two Senators and several Representatives who would caucus and vote with the Democrats has cooled their ardor. Statehood was again on the table in Congress where Democrats needed more Senate votes to shore up their narrow majority. Many expected action on it along with statehood for the District of Columbia. 

 

Trumpista Republicans are now unanimously opposed to statehood and some have even suggested that independence which would strip American citizenship from Puerto Ricans would be preferable. They would also like to prevent continued migration to the mainland from the island. From xenophobe Trump’s perspective it is an open door, when coupled with an end to birthright citizenship, to potentially detaining and deporting millions.

Nevada Legalized Gambling as Depression Measure and it Never Went Away

A Reno casino packs them in shortly after gambling was legalized in Nevada in March 1931.

When the Nevada Governor signed Assembly Bill 98 which legalized most forms of gambling—or gaming as they prefer to characterize it—on March 19, 1931 not much changed in an already pretty wide-open state.  But the measure was supposed to send a signal to visitors and tourists with spending money that the party was on and rescue a desperate, collapsed economy.  Together with a companion act making quickie divorces easily obtainable after establishing a short “residence” it was a huge success.  By the end of the decade Nevada cash registers were ringing loudly.

To understand the unusual centrality of gambling to Nevada history and culture, we have to take a brief step back to look at its geography and climate.  The state occupies much of the Great Basin, essentially the floor of a pre-historic ocean that existed millions of years ago, sort of a giant bowl between the Rocky Mountains to the east and the Sierra Nevadas to the west.  I’m not sure where all of that water went except that it ain’t there now.  About all that’s left of that ocean is a puddle called the Great Salt Lake over in what is now Utah.  Today, and for thousands of years it has mostly been some of the driest and most inhospitable terrain in North America—blistering deserts and ranges of arid mountains.

It was sparsely populated in parts by only the poorest and most ragged native tribes who were pushed there by more aggressive warrior tribes surrounding them.  The land was too poor for agriculture and supported little or no large game leaving these wretched peoples to survive as lizard eating hunter-gathers who dwelt in hovels that were little more than piles of sticks.  And in fact, much of the land was too hostile to support even these tribes.  Vast reaches were uninhabitable.

When the European peoples came, it was a country that must be dangerously endured on the way to something better.  The wagon trains to California crossed it to their peril and many immigrants and their livestock perished on the way. 

When the Mormons came to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake and began to spread out from there, some of the heartiest of their pioneers staked out hardscrabble communities clustering around what little water could be found.  That included what Utah Philips later called the Old Mormon Muddy Mission in the Las Vegas Valley near the site of today’s downtown in 1855. Nevada became the vast west of Utah Territory.

The discovery of the massive and rich silver Comstock Lode under the eastern slope of Mount Davidson, in the Virginia Range in 1859 set off the greatest mining rush since California in 1849. It changed everything. 

The U.S. Government had gone to virtual war with the Mormons in 1857-58 over polygamy and Brigham Young’s perceived defiance of Federal law.  Thousands of troops were dispatched, and the Mormon Nauvoo Legion Militia revived.  Despite Mormon harassment and delaying tactics no actual battles were fought until Congress ordered the Buchanan administration to ease up and allow Young to remain as governor after swearing to uphold and obey the law.  But the Feds were in no mood to allow the Mormons to get their hands on what looked like the limitless wealth of the Comstock Lode and in 1860 carved Nevada Territory of the western half of Utah.

The onset of the Civil War in 1861 made Nevada strategically important to keeping California, where there was an active secessionist movement in the Union.  It was also on the route of the proposed transcontinental railroad and telegraph lines which would stitch the nation together.

Most Americans, if they are aware of this part of the story at all, learned about it from Mark Twain, a young Confederate deserter named Samuel L. Clemens who accompanied his Republican older brother Orion, who had snagged a political appointment as Territorial Secretary.  Orion went to the capitol at Carson City while Sam tried his hand at prospecting and mining around Virginia City until he took up a career as newspaper man writing as Mark Twain.  

C Street in Virginia City, epicenter of the Comstock Lode.

In his first book Roughing It, Twain vigorously depicted the rough and tumble life of miners in the boom towns of Nevada and California which centered around saloons and all of their temptations including rot gut booze, rigged gambling wheels, shady faro dealers, and poker games played with drawn pistols on the table.  Fleecing the miners on payday leaving them broke and enthralled to the new silver kings became the Territory’s second major industry.

Republicans had an urgent need to speed the underpopulated Territory to statehood—they needed the three Electoral College votes for Abraham Lincoln who was up against a tough challenge from Democrat and former Army Commander George McClellan running on a peace platform.  On October 31, 1864 just days before the November election, Nevada achieved statehood.  But by the time the election was held Union battlefield victories had turned the tide of the War and much of the Army had been furloughed home to cast their votes.  Lincoln was re-elected easily without having to rely on Nevada.  But they couldn’t actually take back statehood.

After the war the construction boom around laying the track for the Union Pacific Railway which created the unusual Hell on Wheels end of line camps and created new towns at division points.  Gamblers set up in tent saloons and fleeced gandy dancers as effectively as they had miners.  When passenger service to and from California was finally up and running, the more successful sharpies erected fine edifices for their saloon/casino/brothels which were very efficient in sucking money from the pockets of well-healed travelers on the briefest of layovers. 

Proprietors of such establishments became important local personages and were often elected mayors, justices of the peace, sheriffs, and other county officials, and state legislators or could hand pick candidates for those offices.  Their political power in the state sometimes even rivaled that of the silver kings.

Through the rest of the 19th Century Nevadans rode out the cycle of panics and booms to which the mining based economy was especially sensitive and endured many of their richest mining districts becoming played out.  By the mid 1870’s the eight original bonanzas of the Comstock Lode were basically exhausted.  Only small, deep mines in the area continued to produce and they were finished by the 1920’s leaving Virginia City, Gold Hill, and other settlements virtual ghost towns.  Smaller strikes of silver and even gold continued to be made around the state, but nothing on the scale of the glory days of the Comstock Lode.  The economy only diversified marginally.  Ranching was established to feed the California market via a spreading network of railroads, but much of the state was too arid to support grazing.  The Mormons were spreading from Utah again and establishing communities.  When the Latter Day Saints officially abolished polygamy, hold-outs escaped to remote areas of Nevada.  Railway tourism was becoming a thing for the wealthy and Lake Tahoe on the California state line became a resort area centered in Reno.  Open gambling was one of the attractions which brought visitors to the state.

But slowly a movement began to build to end gaming in the state because of its predatory nature, fostering of corruption, association with other vice especially prostitution, encouragement of street crime and violence, and on general moral grounds.  An unusual and sometimes uncomfortable alliance began to build to end legal gambling.  As always in such reform efforts, at the center of things were the middle class women who yearned to erase the wild and wooly reputations of their communities and bring civilization and respectability.  Even without the power of the franchise in alliance with Protestant ministers they held a lot of sway over their sometimes reluctant husbands.  The growing Mormon minority was scorned by the same Protestant Evangelicals but was on the same side against vice.

The Labor movement, especially the miners of the Western Federation of Miners, hated the gamblers and tinhorns who preyed on their members.  But the unionists were the arch enemy of the Silver kings and the gambling bosses, the biggest political powers in the state.  

Wyatt Earp's saloon in Tonopah, Nevada pictured in 1902 was just the kind of place reformers wanted to put out of the gambling business.  Earp, the man with the mustache was a "sporting man", professional gambler, and faro dealer.  His wife Josie is likely the woman riding side saddle to the right.  If you left Wyatt's place with any jingle left in your jeans it was certainly not his fault.

Finally, in 1909 the anti-gambling forces came together as part of the nation-wide Progressive Movement and were able to get sweeping legislation that outlawed almost all forms of gambling effective in 1910.  In the larger towns and cities, casinos and card rooms were shut down.  The popular early slot machines that were even then cropping up in saloons, cafes, hotel lobbies, and other locations were removed.  But in many counties and municipalities enforcement was nonexistent and gambling continued more or less openly.  And in those larger towns with reform administrations, things just moved behind closed doors.  Occasional raids would often embarrassingly sweep up local dignitaries and officials especially when their private clubs and fraternal lodges were targeted.  Routine corruption flourished with payoffs to cops, prosecutors, and judges.

Even though gambling continued, its reduced visibility and accessibility had an almost immediate impact on the growing tourist industry.  The state legislature started carving out various exceptions to the total ban almost immediately.  According to the history of gaming on the Nevada Resorts Association web site:

…gaming laws relaxed, initially allowing specific social games and “nickel-in-the-slot machines” paying out drinks, cigars and sums of less than $2. By 1919, all cities and counties throughout the state were licensing card rooms that permitted social games such as bridge and whist, and during the 1920s, Reno became the state’s gambling capital, with both legal card rooms and clubs offering illegal games.

The Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression hit Nevada exceptionally hard.  The mining industry, ailing for decades, was hit hard and unemployment soared.  Desperate for some stimulus to the economy, tax revenue for the busted state treasury, and fearful that with thousands of construction workers soon to pour into the state for the Boulder Dam project on the Colorado River near Las Vegas that the Federal government would harshly crack down on illegal gambling, freshman assemblyman Phil Tobin, a Humboldt County rancher, introduced the legislation to legalize casino gambling and loosen the placement regulation on slot machines.   Public opinion was in support and pro-gambling forces swamped a rear-guard of moralists.  

On March 19, 1931 Republican Governor Fred Balzar, who was born in Virginia City during the Comstock Lode boom, signed Assembly Bill 98 into law and a companion law loosening divorce residency requirements and liberalizing the grounds for ending marriage.

Legalized gambling came with regulation intended to stamp out  the flagrant cheating in many illicit operations.   Most of the old time sporting men and gamblers who ran the old clip joints and who tried to make the transition of legit businessmen soon recognized that there was plenty of profit  in the house’s advantage if the tables and slots could be kept full.   The days of the blatantly rigged wheal, loaded dice, and marked cards if not completely banished were brought under relative control.

Even in the midst of the Depression, the strategy exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations.  By mid-decade Reno was the bustling and gambling and divorce capital of America.  It was enshrined in popular culture by movies, radio shows, and magazine articles.  Meanwhile once sleepy Las Vegas began to prosper with its downtown Freemont Street casinos benefitting from both the Boulder Dam construction boom and the relatively short distance from Los Angeles.

In the early ‘40s the first hotel-casinos, Rancho Vegas and New Frontier opened.  But in 1946 Los Angeles gangster Bugsy Siegel gained control of the Flamingo, the first really lavish hotel casino on the new Vegas Strip and began featuring big name entertainers in the hotel lounge.  Soon the Chicago outfit gained control of most of the strip and some of the old downtown casinos, muscling out the old time local gamblers.  Managers skimmed off at least 10% to the wise guys back east and legalized bookmaking operations set the lines for the illegal books in cities across the country.  When the Flamingo’s initial opening flopped threatening the substantial investment he had raised from New York crime kingpins Siegel was suspected of pocketing some of the Chicago share, he was famously rubbed out at his girlfriend’s house on June 20, 1947.  The hit may have been premature because the Flamingo was soon making money hand over fist and inspiring construction of ever larger and more elaborate hotels.

The Flamingo Hotel casino floor in the '60s.

Mob involvement in Nevada gambling continued well into the ‘70s and ‘80s but was slowly broken down by Federal investigations and Nevada Gambling Commission action.  Known gangsters were forced out and ties to supposedly legitimate operators were exposed.   

Since the 1990’s the old Strip casino hotels have been supplanted by corporate owned and operated theme resorts, each more elaborate and outrageous than the last and featuring performances by superstars and elaborate shows like Cirque de Soleil and the Blue Man Group.  Even though gambling revenues drove the building spree, for a while the new corporate owners tried to market the resorts as family destinations.  Las Vegas regularly vied with Orlando Florida, Disney World, and other theme parks as the Number 1 tourist destination in the United States.

The strategy worked.  In the new century Las Vegas became the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States with vast new subdivisions springing up in the desert.  But soon almost every state tried to cash in on legalized gambling in one way or another.  Ordinary Americans did not have to fly to Las Vegas or Reno to lose their money.  Business began falling off.  Then came the great Economic Collapse of 2008.  No metropolitan area was hit harder than Las Vegas by the mortgage crisis.  Most of the mortgages in all of those new subdivisions were risky and had been sold to bundlers.  Foreclosure rates soared and whole neighborhoods of almost brand new houses are still virtual ghost towns.  Meanwhile some of the new hotel resorts went bankrupt and closed.  Other went into receivership.

To recover, Las Vegas has abandoned its push to be a family destination and promoting sin with its What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas promotions.  The Coronavirus Pandemic was a big hit to the economy, but tourism revived big time with pent-up demand.  Elaborate new resort cassinos are going up again.

Vegas sport books like this are not only tourist magnets, apps using their odds and gimmick betting keep the money rolling in 24/7 from around the world.

With the internet and widespread legalization of on-line gaming corporate owned sports books, largely based in Nevada, can operate almost anywhere in the world.  Local TV viewers across the country have grown used to being inundated with ads for competing betting aps—the same aps that also now partner with and sponsor broadcasts of virtually all professional sports franchises.

One of these days maybe the Feds or somebody will launch an investigation into whether the new corporate masters are all that much different at heart from the gangsters and old time oily faro dealers in brocade vests.