Gold Ranch in Verdi is the first casino you see on Interstate 80 traveling from Northern California to Northern Nevada. It's two miles past the state line on the highway, but the state line zigzags in such a way near the casino that a small part of California is adjacent to it. Several years ago the powers-that-be at Gold Ranch took advantage of that by starting to sell California lottery tickets just inside the California boundaries. It was perfectly legal. And customers from Nevada, who don't have their own lottery, swarmed the place in search of a big jackpot, as shown below.
Gold Ranch is still open but no longer has table games. In fact, even when it did, you could never count on the one blackjack table being open. I remember stopping there in the late 1990s at 6 p.m. on a Saturday, trying to pick up a $25 chip for my collection, and was told the table wasn't going to open that night. I eventually got the chip.
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