Within the next decade, 12 more states would create their own lotteries. But when the first lottery tickets were pulled in July 1964, New Hampshire had already made $5.7 million - around $56 million in 2023 dollars. It was a controversial decision, opposed by federal agencies, the church and even by the mafia, with its lucrative illegal gambling rackets. Opinions about gambling would start to change in the 1960s, when New Hampshire created the first state lottery in 1964.

State officials show off a giant-sized version of the first-ever lottery tickets from the inaugural Maine State Lottery in 1974. In quiet, respectable Maine, with its Yankee sensibilities of frugality and modesty, such irresponsibility with money was out of the question - and yet, police in cities like Bangor and Portland would still occasionally break up small-scale gambling operations. Among the only legal forms of gambling was parimutuel betting on horse racing, which became legal in many states in the 1930s as a less risky, easier to regulate form of betting. was relegated to underground clubs, to riverboats that plied the Mississippi River, to party towns like Galveston, Texas, or to gambling palaces in semi-lawless frontier towns like Dodge City, Kansas. How did public opinion about gambling in Maine manage to change so quickly? And did the rollout of legalized gambling bring the financial boost to the state that its supporters promised 20 years ago?įor the majority of its history, gambling in the U.S. In fact, aside from Nevada, from the 1890s until the 1970s, nearly every form of gambling aside from horse and dog racing was illegal almost everywhere in the U.S.Ĭlipping from 2003, via the Bangor Daily News archives on.

You can play slot machines and table games at casinos in Bangor and Oxford you can bet on horse races and sports games and you can play the lottery, both state-run and national.īut 50 years ago, gambling beyond on-site betting at race tracks - even the lottery - was illegal in Maine. Today, nearly all forms of gambling are legal in Maine, including sports betting, which went live last week. Send your questions to years ago this week, 53 percent of Maine voters in the 2003 election legalized slot machines in Maine, through the creation of a “racino” connected to Bangor’s Bass Park harness racing track. Hard Telling Not Knowing each week tries to answer your burning questions about why things are the way they are in Maine - specifically about Maine culture and history, both long ago and recent, large and small, important and silly.

Concerts next year at river city casino