The Northern Club: Mayme Stocker and Las Vegas License No. 1

The railroad family behind the club

The Stocker family arrived in Las Vegas in 1911 in connection with Oscar Stocker’s railroad employment. Mayme opened the Northern business around 1920, and the family acquired the land and building in October 1921.

Railroad employment shaped how the business was presented. Family accounts explain that railroad workers were discouraged from association with liquor or gambling, making Mayme’s public role particularly important. She was the named operator and later license holder, while the sons participated in different parts of the family business.

Harold learned dealing and later entered county politics; Lester developed a reputation as a professional gambler; Clarence was associated with the hotel operation. These roles should remain distinct rather than reducing every family member to the same generic title of casino owner.

What gambling meant before 1931

The Northern was described as a soft-drink establishment in the Prohibition period. Historical accounts identify five card games permitted under Nevada’s narrower pre-1931 rules: stud poker, draw poker, lowball, 500, and bridge.

That legal distinction matters. The choice was not simply between a fully legal modern casino and a wholly secret gambling den. Businesses operated within a complicated environment of permitted card play, restrictions on other gambling, prohibition, and uneven enforcement.

A Nevada Magazine reconstruction also describes Lester Stocker’s support for legalization and a 1930 meeting at a back table involving business and political figures. The account places the club within the campaign for change, although it does not provide verified minutes of that meeting.

March 1931: the license becomes a landmark

Institutional histories place the issue of License No. 1 on March 20, 1931, immediately after Nevada’s legalization bill was signed. Mayme Stocker and J. H. Morgan were the named recipients, with Sheriff Joe Keate identified as issuing the license.

The distinction is the first licensed gambling establishment in Las Vegas under the new system, not the first place where anyone had gambled in Nevada. Stocker is also recognized as the first woman to hold a Nevada gaming license.

A reproduced certificate in a later local-history source carries a June date. That may reflect a later document, reissue, or caption problem; it does not justify silently changing the March date repeated by institutional histories. The original licensing records and the family papers remain the appropriate basis for resolving the discrepancy.

A faro dispute puts the license at risk

By October 1934, Dave Stearns and Elmer Sorber were operating the Northern. The Mob Museum’s reconstruction describes three slot machines, three card tables, and four gaming devices in that period, with blackjack, poker, craps, and roulette among the activities. These are a 1934 snapshot, not an opening-day inventory.

A dealer using the name Hall or Howe proposed a faro operation. A player identified as Burns, later connected with the name John W. Byrnes, reportedly won $3,200 in three hands. The resulting disagreement over payment moved beyond the tables when Burns demanded city action against the club’s license.

At the October 8 commission meeting, accusations of cheating, nonpayment, and a possible setup produced a heated confrontation. Attorneys eventually negotiated a private settlement reported as $1,500, and the Northern retained its license.

The account documents the dispute and its public consequences; it does not settle every accusation about who cheated whom. Its historical importance is clearer: licensed gambling depended on civic confidence and enforcement as well as the ability to run a game.

One address, several businesses

The building combined street-level commercial space with hotel rooms upstairs. This helps explain why the Northern Hotel could continue while the casino name and operator changed. The family’s ownership of property and the operation of gaming were related but separate histories.

Later phases included the Turf Club and, in 1945, Wilbur Clark’s Monte Carlo Club. UNLV’s corporate collection identifies the Monte Carlo as its own business, formed in 1944, rather than simply the original Northern continuing unchanged.

Subsequent changes brought other restaurant and gaming uses to the site, including Coin Castle and La Bayou. La Bayou closed in 2016, followed by demolition in 2017 in connection with Golden Gate expansion. The continuity of a location should not erase the distinct identities of the businesses that occupied it.

The objects that preserve a first

The gaming license, Stocker family papers, photographs, and business documents are central to understanding the Northern. They reveal the people and legal arrangements behind the familiar first-license story.

A confidently attributed early Northern chip set is not established in the evidence used here. Later Monte Carlo, Coin Castle, and La Bayou objects cannot be relabeled as Northern Club material merely because they connect to the same location.

The Northern’s significance is therefore broader than a collectible or a superlative. It joins railroad-town Las Vegas, a family business, political change, and the practical disputes of early licensed gaming within one small Fremont Street property.