Gambling: The Gold Rush Experience
The palaces of fortune at the heart of San Francisco, teeming night and day with professional gamblers and Argonauts.
This had been celebrated as indications of cultural refinement and achievement in the far West, in 1850.
A mere six years later, gamblers and wide-open gaming halls were viewed as obstacles to continued economic growth and social responsibility.
The dramatic shift fell into step with the other measures undertaken to recreate Atlantic Coast civilization on the Pacific slope.
Californians' struggle to become more typical American citizens took shape in changing statutes against betting. After the first weak anti-gambling bill of 1855, the state legislature steadily strengthened laws against public and commercial gaming.
In 1860, it banned most banking games by making it a misdemeanor to operate them.
This measure was directed not at gaming itself so much, nor at ordinary players, but at professional gamblers.
In a state that cherished risk taking, it remained more or less acceptable to play at games of chance, but not to run them for fixed percentages of profit.
An 1863 bill reiterated the legal distinction between players and gamblers by giving losers at banking games the right to sue dealers in order to recover losses.
Nine years later, the state legislature approved a more stringent version of its previous ban, but omitted a few select games.
Finally, in 1885, it became illegal in California not only to operate the prohibited games, and players were made equal. The state had finally taken the last step to drive lawful gaming from inside its borders.
Legislation provided an official record of the Golden State's changing views on casino-type gambling. Laws did not necessarily affect residents' behavior, however.
For much of the time between 1855 and 1885, the statues did not outlaw every kind of game, proved difficult to enforce, and provided mainly light penalties.
Government found it hard to deter citizens from wagering their favorite diversion, for the gaming instinct was deeply ingrained in the population.
William H. Brewer, an eastern professor who led a scientific survey of the state during the early 1860s, sniffed at the people's willingness to wager on anything.
Such inclination turned much anti-gambling legislation into a 'farce, a moral morsel that tastes well abroad' but stimulates no appetite at home.
Californians had tried to uphold the cause of James King by striving to regain eastern standards, but their continued interest in gambling, through the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth, demonstrated how Gold Rush sentiments persisted in the Far West.
The campaign to banish gaming from the Golden State did not succeed, but it did help to modify the shape of betting.
The conspicuous and egalitarian style that prevailed at Portsmouth Square in early San Francisco, foreshadowing casino gambling in Las Vegas, quickly lost favor.