Episode 67 - Hot Springs, AR

In 1926, a man ran for mayor of Hot Springs, Arkansas on one promise: he'd keep the town open to illegal gambling. He won, and kept that promise for twenty years — drawing serious money and serious company, including Al Capone, who became a regular at the Majestic Hotel. By the 1960s, the Justice Department called it the largest illegal gambling operation in the country. The mayor was voted out in 1947, but it took state police raids in 1967 to actually shut the casinos down. The bathhouse where visitors still take the same mineral baths is standing right where all of it happened.