to its final peace and happiness, are harbored and indulged." English writer Harriet Martineau described the deportment and social station of a professional gambler she encountered while traveling through modern-day West Virginia to the then-burgeoning spa town of White Sulphur Springs:One of the personages whom I referred to as low company, at the beginning of my story, declared himself in the stage-coach to be a gambler, about to visit the Springs for professional purposes. He said to another man, who looked fit company for him, that he played higher at faro than any man in the country but one. These two men slept while we were mounting to the Hawk's Nest. People who pursue their profession by night, as such people do, must sleep in the day, happen what may. They were rather self-important during the journey; it was a comfort to see how poor a figure they cut at the Springs. They seemed to sink into the deepest insignificance that could be desired. Such persons are the pests of society in the south and west; and they are apt to boast that their profession is highly profitable in the eastern cities. I fear this is no empty vaunt. Gambling was made illegal and forced to relocate to safe havens such as New Orleans or on riverboats where the captain was the only law in force. Anti-gambling movements shut down the lotteries. As railroads replaced riverboat travel, other venues were closed. The increasing pressure of legal prohibitions on gambling created risks and opportunities for illegal operations. Frontier From 1848 to 1855, the California Gold Rush attracted ambitious young prospectors from around the world, to prospect for gold and gamble away were two sides of their manliness. By the 1850s, the influx of aspiring prospectors had made San Francisco a world-famous city. San Francisco had overtaken New Orleans as the gambling capital of the US. However, as respectability set in, California gradually strengthened its laws and its policing of gambling; the games went underground. Gambling was popular on the frontier during the settlement of the West; nearly everyone participated in games of chance. Towns at the end of the cattle trails such as Deadwood, South Dakota or Dodge City, Kansas, and major railway hubs such as Kansas City and Denver were famous for their many lavish gambling houses. Frontier gamblers had become the local elite. At the top of the line,