The Roaring 20s and The Screaming Eagle

Okay, last time I left off with us coming into Eagle Nest, a wee town in northern New Mexico. I had just talked about how it has a 2,400-acre (10 km2) lake right next door.

But I also hinted that there was something more to the city’s history. It turns out that it wasn’t always just a great place to go fishing or commune with the woods and trees. At one time it was...get ready...a gambling Mecca.

Here’s the story: not that long ago, every city and every town had its Sawdust Joint...so called because it had sawdust on the floor. Why sawdust on the floor? Because it soaked up stuff...spilled beer, spilled whiskey, spilled blood. And what sawdust joints offered was cheap drinks, ladies of easy virtue, and gambling. Lots of gambling.

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About the images--Three today: first, a window and lantern on an adobe wall in Taos itself. Second, a shot along the road to Taos. Third, Martha judging her annoying husband (okay, not harshly) in Georgetown some time back.

The joint was usually located just outside of town, and operated with the winking connivance of local authorities.(1) But, there were also whole cities and towns that played the same role -- places where people escaping from the cares of daily life (and the restrictions of small town America) could kick up their heels a bit, drink more than was good for them, lose more money than they should, and maybe explore the wonders of an STD.(2)

Among the communities that fell into this category were Little Rock, Arkansas; Dodge City, Kansas; Tombstone, Arizona; Galveston, Texas; the Storyville district of New Orleans, Louisiana; and...and....

Eagle Nest.

This tiny town, today beloved by fisherfolk and other friends of everything with gills...was a gambling hell.(3)

What happened was simple. When Elizabethtown died, most everyone moved away...but some of the population moved south to Eagle Nest. There, they re-opened their clubs, casinos, bars, and backroom betting operations. Gradually, by the 1920s, they embraced as well slot machines. Indeed, one-armed bandits, in their tinkling glory, became the backbone of the illicit economy.

Understand, the whole town didn’t become one vast casino. There were still churches and stores and schools and all the rest. But gambling became an important part of the way the city made money and did business.

And, mostly, this was small stakes gambling. There were few “whales.” (4) Mostly it was railroad workers, cowboys, miners, traveling salesmen...plus a few respectable gentlemen from nearby towns who wanted to drink and gamble and more, but with plausible deniability. For them, slot machines were perfect--relatively low stakes, no dealers, a certain anonymity.

It all ended in a rush between 1930 and 1940. There was now an increasingly centralized and effective state government. Reform was in the air. Better roads and the Model T meant more people were moving about. Eagle Nest could no longer hide.

In 1931, Nevada legalized gambling. Worse, over the next few years, Las Vegas would invite in out-of-state money and out-of-state expertise. In 1933, Prohibition ended. Now you didn’t need to sneak off to small towns and secret enclaves to drink. And...well...after that, it was all over but the shouting. Illicit gambling, wink-wink towns, and Sawdust Joints were doomed.

They say that for years afterward divers could find slot machines in Eagle Nest Lake. They’d been dumped by panicked gamblers on their way out of town.

To give Eagle’s Nest its due, it moved very quickly into a new economy. It reached out to fishermen and campers, hikers and nature lovers, tourists and lovers of natural beauty...and today, it is the town that we saw as we drove in.

Which brings me to the next phase of my story. For you see, it was getting late. We’d been driving all morning and part of the afternoon. And we were hungry. We set out to find lunch.

And that was when...to our surprise...we realized...

We had a little problem.

More to come.

Footnotes:

1. Remember the scene in Casablanca where Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) tells Rick, “I'm shocked! Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” and then he happily collects his winnings? I’ve heard it argued that the scene may be set in North Africa, but the audience knew it to be what happened regularly in their own backyards. They had heard some version of that line from many a sheriff, mayor, and clergyman before.

2. Having a venereal disease in the early 20th century was no fun at all. The usual treatments involved toxic mercury compounds which sometimes killed the patient more quickly than did the disease itself. In 1910, there was a major breakthrough when German scientist Paul Ehrlich developed “Salvarsan,” an arsenic-based drug that actually killed syphilis before it killed the user. After that, modern antibiotics took the lead. But, with growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and a growing public resistance to medical science, we could be heading back to the bad old days.

3. Hard to believe, but true. See “The Colorful History of Eagle Nest,” New Mexico True, Dec. 13, 2017, https://www.newmexico.org/blog/post/the-colorful-history-of-eagle-nest/

4. Casino slang for a high stakes gambler. A “minnow” is a low-stakes, low spending gambler. Me, I’m more your basic mudfish. ‘Cause you ain’t a gonna see me betting. Ever. I know just enough probability theory to know the odds of beatin’ the house.

Copyright©2026 Michael Jay Tucker

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