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. Clipping from 2003, via the Bangor Daily News archives on. 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. 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.
