Historic Gambling in the USA

Gambling's been going on in the USA for a LONG time. In colonial America, Virginia was financed by a lottery in England. This was in 1612! That's only 120 years after Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and it's 150 years before the American Revolution. Speaking of which, many people aren't aware of it, but most of the American Revolution was paid for with lotteries too. States all across the country still finance education, roads, and other public services by offering state-sponsored gambling in the form of lotteries.

Soldiers during the American Revolution would take their musket ammmo, flatten it into cubes, and would use their bayonets to put spots on the cubes. All so they could have dice to gamble with.

George Washington gambled on horse races and even owned horses for that very purpose.

Things got really exciting in the gambling world in 1827 when the first American casino opened in New Orleans. And in 1850 there were over 6000 casinos (tiny gambling houses mostly) in New York. (New York City, not New York state.)

And of course, gambling was big in the Old West too. Riverboat gambling was commonplace, poker stories are still being told, and most of the furniture brought out to the new towns springing up throughout the old west was in the form of card tables and roulette tables.