Las Vegas Park might have become one of the premier Kentucky Derby prep races. Maybe Big Brown or Z Fortune would have raced here in a Las Vegas Handicap or Silver State Stakes in recent months.
The story of thoroughbred racing in Las Vegas is riddled with embezzling and forgery, a special master and a bankruptcy referee, federal judges, poor attendance and a broken tote board.
Joseph M. Smoot, a New York promoter who had made and lost several fortunes, had big dreams for a racetrack in Las Vegas that would have no rival.
It was a dusty-rose mirage.
Smoot had two-tone shoes, a cane and a straw hat atop his white hair. The fast-talking promoter from New York had charm, persuasive powers and a stunning redheaded wife half his age.
But in 1946, he didn’t have a ride from Brooklyn to Nevada. His lawyer’s partner, Hank Greenspun, had a red Buick convertible and a keen streak of adventure. The pair went west.
As soon as they arrived in Las Vegas, they separated. Greenspun sent for his wife, Barbara, became interested in journalism and started the Las Vegas Sun in 1950.
Smoot grew secretive. Greenspun called him a “lamster” in his 1966 biography, “Where I Stand: The Record of a Reckless Man.” Smoot became involved in “elaborate promotional maneuvers.”
“Old Joe knew a track wouldn’t have a chance,” Greenspun wrote about the daily drama that engulfed Las Vegas Park, at Paradise and Desert Inn, “and he said so when he came here in 1946.”
Smoot played roles in building Hialeah and Gulfstream parks in Florida, and Santa Anita Park in California. But he left, or had been booted, before each opened.
The Sun printed a five-paragraph apology from Smoot when Las Vegas Park did not open on time. There had been other delays, and Smoot’s tactics and associations provided Greenspun with regular fodder.
Even Ponzi wouldn’t give Smoot a loan, Greenspun wrote. Maybe he will sell the house and cars he purchased with the promotional stock and put the proceeds back into the track — where they should have gone in the first place.
His whole gang of sharpies worked together in a gigantic plot to “mulct” the innocent people of Las Vegas out of their hard-earned dough.
Smoot and two associates were charged with felony embezzlement. Two others were slapped with felony forgery charges.
Sen. Pat McCarran, who posed for promotional pictures with Smoot before a half-built grandstand, was accused of taking $8,000 from Smoot in a room at the Thunderbird.
Las Vegas Park high jinks competed with atomic-bomb tests, water-shortage worries and population-growth concerns for space on the front page.
Gas was 21.9 cents a gallon. A deluxe filet mignon dinner at the Golden Nugget went for $4.50. A new yellow Plymouth cost $2,395. Lena Horne played the El Rancho Vegas.
Her famous “Stormy Weather” should have been the theme of Las Vegas Park.
In federal court, Smoot couldn’t produce receipts or canceled checks when questioned about $500,000 in missing money.
“You ever try to pay a politician with a check?” he said, making courtroom spectators howl.
Smoot survived an ouster attempt by a band of angry stockholders, 8,000 of whom had invested more than $2 million in the venture, at a meeting at an Elks Lodge. But Judge Roger Foley removed Smoot and appointed a trustee to run the track.
Smoot pleaded not guilty to a grand jury embezzlement indictment.
“The law had to wait until he was 70 to catch up to him,” Greenspun wrote.
A new board of directors took over and vowed to finish the track, and top stables such as Calumet Farm shipped horses to Las Vegas.
The clubhouse and grandstand were painted pink to emulate the Hipodromo Rosado in Argentina. Almost $1.9 million, the richest prize amount ever offered by a first-year track, would be awarded over the 67-day meet.
It would culminate in the $100,000-added Las Vegas Futurity on Dec. 20. Even Greenspun became a booster.
“It has become reality beyond our greatest expectations,” he wrote on Sept. 4, 1953, when the $4.5 million park finally opened.
Before the first race, the Australian-made tote board on the infield went down. And machines inside the $50 and $500 betting windows broke, so high rollers were forced to make many small wagers at the commoners’ windows.
Lines were long. Tempers were short. A disappointing and shallow-pocketed crowd of 8,200 saw Lefty James, with star jockey Tony DeSpirito on top, win the $10,000 Mirage Handicap.
After three days of poor attendance and the continued malfunctioning of the tote board, racing was suspended for two weeks so an American model could be installed.
On Oct. 10, 4,000 patrons bet a total of $100,000. Without a doubt, veteran turf writer Pete Bonamy wrote, it was one of the poorest showings by a racing crowd ever recorded.
The Las Vegas Jockey Club ended its ill-fated racing venture Oct. 19. Las Vegas Park played host to 13 thoroughbred racing days. Lefty James, bred locally by J. Kell Houssels, won three times in the short, unhappy life of the track.
The president of the club said the venture lost money every day. It couldn’t lure enough visitors out of the casinos or locals out of their homes.
The park reopened in 1954 for a 48-meet schedule of quarter horse racing, but that lasted only seven weeks because of poor attendance.
In its final days as a track, it played host to automobile and motorcycle races. In the latter, a rider died when he slid off course in a cloud of dirt and was impaled on a wooden guardrail.
On Feb. 14, 1955, the Nevada Board of Regents approved a Nevada Southern campus — which became UNLV — on a choice chunk of land a couple of miles south of the track that had been donated by Howard and Estelle Wilbourn.
That night, on a bed in a free room at the Grand Hotel, 71-year-old Joe Smoot died of natural causes. He spent his final years as a shill in downtown casinos. He was still under indictment.
A veteran of the Spanish-American War, he was cremated in Las Vegas and his remains were interred at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
“Three years ago, the whole town was eating out of his hand,” a friend said. “Now, he will go out in style as he probably would have wished.”
