Mack's Mountain Club was in Sonora. I talked to a couple of old timers that remembered Mack's having full up gaming in the good old days. There were a lot of places in the foothills along highway 49 that had illegal gambling. It all came to an end when the current Governor Brown's dad, Pat Brown, became the state Attorney General and worked with Estes Kefauver to shut them all down. What makes it hard to identify the true illegal places is that many - like the National Hotel in Jackson - became legal card rooms after the dust settled. Gambling was an integral part of the California pioneering spirit and I'm sure it was very wide spread but its sure hard to sort out what was legal and what was not.

You can bet some folks bet on the roll of these dice in the "good old days"....