Once gamblers realized the benefits of the more industrial form of gaming, at least in sites that could attract high volume, they made it the accepted style of play.
The business of betting now depended more on players of more moderate means.
The size of most wagers became smaller--- Bancroft suggested between fifty cents and five dollars--- but the number of bettors expanded tremendously.
By becoming more honest and by attracting a wider range of customers, gambling became a more legitimate enterprise.
Dealers, with their handsome dress and professional appearance, heightened the image of respectability.
Of all the places in early California, gambling became most respectable in the grand houses that bordered the old Mexican plaza at the center of San Francisco.
While gambling took place in the drinking saloons of small towns and mining camps, cities fostered more specialized establishments where gaming reigned supreme and the bar was incidental.
As the largest and most prosperous town of the Gold Rush, San Francisco developed the specialized gaming hall to its logical conclusion and devoted an entire block to the new betting palaces.
But the spectacular establishments that lined Portsmouth Square, flourishing from 1849 to 1855, marked the apex of early California betting and a set of a new pace for American gambling.
The great gambling saloons assumed an unprecedented significance in San Francisco that was embodied both in their central location and in their finances.
When migrants spoke of their days in Gold Rush San Francisco, they noted that the establishments near the plaza overshadowed other buildings that much of the life of the throbbing town centered in that locality.
The plaza constituted the great center of attraction, and its halls served as the favored public houses, offering to Argonauts the most appropriate pastime for their society.
For the privilege of operating out of those crowded places, gamblers paid fantastic rents that drove the prices of surrounding real estate skyward.
As early as 1849, landlords for the Parker House hotel, 'the place' in San Francisco', collected between $1,800 and $2,400 monthly from dealers operating out of small rooms on the second floor, taking in a total of $60,000 per year from the trade.
Next door, gamblers leased the El Dorado, at first a canvas tent measuring fifteen by twenty-five feet, for $40,000 annually.
Rents were due in advance, in gold dust. That gamblers willingly d attested to the lucrative nature of their work.
While San Francisco boomed during the early years of the Gold Rush, 'gambling houses' proved to prosper best in town.
Gambling halls began as cloth shelters of crude structures, but they quickly became the most solid and distinguished buildings in young San Francisco.
They were not only among the first to be rebuilt after fires, but also among the first to be reconstructed in stone.
