Almost ten years after the fabled California Gold Rush, traces of the precious metal were found at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in 1858, where Cherry Creek meets the South Platte River. It was here that the mining camp that was to become the City of Denver, Colorado was established.

Two more gold discoveries in the mountains near Denver ignited a Rocky Mountain gold rush. The first year, the town had a thousand men and half dozen women.

By 1860, more than 100,000 fortune seekers flooded into Colorado. Almost from its inception, Denver was dedicated to supplying and "servicing" the miners. Saloons, gambling houses, dance halls and bordellos dominated the town.

According to one historian, early Denverites "bet on everything from dog fights to snowfall. During the slow winter months, city fathers amused themselves playing poker. They used town lots as poker chips" winning and losing "whole blocks of downtown Denver."

In its first couple of years, the Denver House, one of the most famous frontier gambling halls, was the town's principal action attraction. It was a one-story log building, 130-ft. long and 36-ft. wide. It had glassless windows and a dirt floor frequently sprinkled with water to keep the dust down. It featured a few rough benches and half a dozen gaming tables. The principal games by which players were swindled were Faro and 3-Card Monte.

Ed Chase owned the Denver House and was Denver's first major gambling operator. Within ten years he'd built a gambling empire in the town, including The Progressive Club, The Palace, and the Cricket Club. Chase kept order in The Palace by sitting on a high stool above the bar with a double-barreled shotgun across his lap.

In 1873, the railroad connected "The Mile High City" to the world. Three years later, Colorado became the 38th state and Denver its capital. The new state's constitution gave the vote to Blacks, but not to women.

As Denver developed, several other gambling houses, luxurious by frontier standards, appeared. Among these were the Bucket of Blood, the Morgue, the Chicken Coop, and the Slaughter House (so called because of the frequent shooting incidences there).

In 1894, Ed Chase opened the Inter-Ocean Club, said to have been Denver's most luxurious gambling house. It featured fine paintings, engravings, Oriental rugs, reading rooms and free drinks at the bar. The Club had forty employees and was the foremost place for high stakes gambling. Gambling and corruption grew with the city.

Almost every game and operator was dishonest; the law looked the other way. One historian wrote that the politicians in Denver's earliest days were "as corrupt a gang of office-holding crooks as ever infested an American city."

Early Denver's most notorious gambler was Soapy Smith. He arrived in Denver in 1888 and soon became an underworld kingpin. He ran several crooked clubs; the best known was the Tivoli Saloon and Gambling Hall, where suckers were fleeced at 3-Card Monte, Seven-Up, and Poker.

Soapy was Colorado's leading con man and crooked gambler. Caught rigging Denver elections, he was run out of town, only to become the principal figure in the boomtowns of Leadville, Creede and Central City. That was before the Yukon Gold Rush attracted him to Skagway AK, where he again became boss of crime and corruption. Among the well known gamblers of the West who set up shop in Denver was Belle Siddons, the former Confederate spy who now went by the name of Madame Vestal.

Madame Vestal had a large tent on Blake Street and was considered by some to be the most skillful Blackjack dealer in the country. She was a complete professional. She had shills to lure players to her roulette wheel, Faro table, Keno, and Poker games.

After Tombstone, Dodge City, and other boomtowns, Denver became home to Bat Masterson, a professional gambler and sometimes lawman. Writing to a friend, Bat summed up his life as a gambler, "I came into the world without anything and I have about held my own."

Prizefighting was an emerging sport in the 1880s. Out West, gunslingers and gamblers were important to the fight game. Fair play was maintained by a "display of force on both sides" explains a leading ring historian. Gamblers were often promoters as well as bookies.

Attracted to the action, Bat Masterson became a well respected boxing authority. In the 1890's, while he worked as a manager or dealer in the many gambling houses of Denver, he promoted, judged or was a celebrity guest at every major fight in the US. Eventually, he moved to New York City and became a newspaper sports writer.

By 1890, Denver, the fifth largest city west of the Mississippi, had become the commercial and industrial center of the Rockies. With urbanization came the demand for reform.

William Byers, Editor of Denver's Rocky Mountain News, waged war on the gamblers. So many attempts were made to burn down the newspaper that employees worked with revolvers strapped to their waist and shotguns stood next to their desks. The "civilized" community of Denver managed to outlaw gambling in 1915, along with prostitution and gambling. Although all three businesses continued well into the 20th Century, Denver's boomtown beginning and frontier character was destined for history.