Well, the whole point of Fuller's "Index of Nevada Gaming Establishments" is to list when casinos opened and closed. If those dates aren't reliable, then I wouldn't call it an accurate book.

Now, I have only done research on Tahoe casinos in Stateline, but many of those opening and closing dates are extremely inaccurate (i.e., wrong and misleading). For example, the book lists the closing date of Barney's Casino as 1988, but it actually closed a year earlier, and was replaced by Bill's Casino in the summer of 1987. The book lists Harrah's Thrifty Gambler as opening in 1969, though there were news reports about it a year earlier.

Fuller lists the Tahoe Colonial Club (1954-1955), the Tahoe Palace Club (1956-1959), and the Tahoe Plaza Casino (1954-1961) -- however, these casinos were all in the same building; the actual correct opening and closing dates are: Tahoe Colonial Club (1949-1954); Tahoe Palace Casino (1956-1959); Tahoe Plaza Casino (July 1, 1959 - 1961).

I don't doubt that Harvey Fuller did a lot of research into records available at the time, before the Internet and e-mail. But if people are doing serious research into when casinos actually opened and closed, they need to check other records for themselves, rather than rely on Fuller's "opening" and "closing" dates, many of which are not correct, especially for some of the older and smaller clubs.

I have found that newspaper reports (written by people who were actually there the day a casino opened) are the most reliable in establishing an opening date for a casino. Fuller's index relies instead mostly on license records, which apply to people, not the actual buildings. Just because the owner got a gaming license that was good for one year does not mean that the casino was open until the license expired, and does not really pin down when the casino actually opened. For that, you should consult historic newspaper reports or advertisements.