"Satan's Playground" chronicles the rise and fall of the tumultuous
and lucrative gambling industry that developed just south of the
U.S.-Mexico border in the early twentieth century. As prohibitions
against liquor, horse racing, gambling, and prostitution swept the
United States, the vice industry flourished in and around Tijuana,
to the extent that reformers came to call the town "Satan's
Playground," unintentionally increasing its licentious allure. The
area was dominated by Agua Caliente, a large, elegant gaming resort
opened by four entrepreneurial Border Barons (three Americans and
one Mexican) in 1928. Diplomats, royalty, film stars, sports
celebrities, politicians, patricians, and nouveau-riche capitalists
flocked to Agua Caliente's luxurious complex of casinos, hotels,
cabarets, and sports extravaganzas, and to its world-renowned
thoroughbred racetrack. Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Louis B. Mayer,
the Marx Brothers, Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson,
and the boxer Jack Dempsey were among the regular visitors. So were
mobsters such as Bugsy Siegel, who later cited Agua Caliente as his
inspiration for building the first such resort on what became the
Las Vegas Strip.
Less than a year after Agua Caliente opened, gangsters held up
its money-car in transit to a bank in San Diego, killing the
courier and a guard and stealing the company money pouch. Paul J.
Vanderwood weaves the story of this heist gone wrong, the search
for the killers, and their sensational trial into the overall
history of the often-chaotic development of Agua Caliente, Tijuana,
and Southern California. Drawing on newspaper accounts, police
files, court records, personal memoirs, oral histories, and "true
detective" magazines, he presents a fascinating portrait of vice
and society in the Jazz Age, and he makes a significant
contribution to the history of the U.S.-Mexico border.
General
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