San Francisco The City Built by Gamblers By Byron Liggett The first citizens of the Bay Area were Native Americans. A peaceful people, they were especially social. They liked to party, enjoyed athletic competition and loved to gamble.
The Spanish established a presidio (military post) on the peninsula in 1776. Otherwise, the first dwelling erected in Yerba Buena ("good herb") was built by the harbor master in 1835. It consisted of four redwood posts covered by an old ship sail. Ten years later, the community had only grown to a dozen wood buildings and fifty residents.
With victory in the war with Mexico in 1846, the United States gained Texas, the New Mexico Territory, and California. The village of Yerba Buena, population 200, was renamed San Francisco in 1847.
A year later, gold was discovered on the American River, near Coloma CA. When the news spread to the East, San Francisco suddenly became the gateway to gold. Within a few months, 4,000 men were washing $50,000 a day from the banks of the river.
Risk-takers, gold hunters and gamblers from around the world came to the City by the Bay at the rate of a thousand a week! The wide range of nationalities, religions, classes, and cultures all shared one common purpose - to find their fortune. It is from these early Gold Rush days that San Francisco traces its character of liberal tolerance and acceptance.
According to historian Herbert Asbury, "No other American community has ever experienced the carnival of gambling as reined in the California city during the fabulous days of Forty-Niners." A doctor at the time observed that gambling was "the life and soul of the place."
By 1850, San Francisco boasted a population of 25,000 and more than 1,000 gambling houses. Monte, Faro, Roulette and Twenty-one dominated the action.
The El Dorado was the first famous gambling hall in the City. It opened in 1848 on what is now the site of the Hall of Justice. The walls were hung with raunchy nude paintings and an orchestra played continuously. Tables filled with patrons were covered with gold dust, nuggets and coins. Behind each table was a dealer dressed in traditional black and white.
Portsmouth Square was the gambling center of town. Competition between "hell holes" for customers was fierce. One proprietor nailed up a sign that declared, "Five free drinks... if you find any pretty waiter gals wearing underwear."
Although most wagers were small, 50-cents to $5, gold miners in town for supplies and recreation sometimes bet large. At the Bella Union a miner staked an 85-pound sack of gold dust worth $16,000 and won.
The largest bet ever recorded on a Faro game in San Francisco was $60,000 at the El Dorado by the owner of several gambling houses. He lost, bringing his total losses for the day to $200,000!
For the first few years, gambling houses in San Francisco only hired men dealers and croupiers. But, in 1850 a beautiful French woman, appeared behind a roulette table in the Bella Union. She created such a sensation and attracted so much business that other gambling houses soon followed the lead.
Writer Mark Twain lived for a time in San Francisco after he abandoned gold hunting. It was here that he rewrote a tale heard in the mining camps. Called "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", it told of how a $40 bet in a frog jumping contest was won because one frog was filled with lead shot. The tale brought Twain national recognition.
By 1854, the gold fields were largely exhausted and San Francisco sank into depression until discovery of the Comstock silver lode in western Nevada in 1860.
Richer and longer-lived than the Gold Rush, this second boom firmly established San Francisco as a major American port city. The most notorious gambling section of San Francisco after the Civil War was called the Barbary Coast, named after the coast of North Africa infamous for its pirates. It featured gambling halls, brothels and Chinese opium dens until it came under political reform in 1914.
Poker was largely unknown in San Francisco during the Gold Rush era. It didn't become really popular until 1870 and then it dominated action in the City until the 1890s. The biggest games took place among the richest men in the West and included four Nevada Senators, all of whom had gotten rich in mining. Historian Asbury says they played for higher stakes "than any group of Poker addicts in the history of the game - with them a $50,000 pot was commonplace... a $100,000 was not unusual."
The seeds of another revolution in gaming history were germinated in San Francisco. In 1895, the first mechanical slot machine, the Liberty Bell, was invented by a local mechanic, Charles Fey. He eventually moved his operation to Reno. The city built by gamblers was destroyed by
the earthquake and fire of 1906. San Francisco would rebuild, but it would never again be the gambling capital of America.
