The peak of bathing in Hot Springs was 1946. More than a million baths were taken by visitors from across the country that year. In 1947, a steady decline began.

As bathing became less important to the Hot Springs economy, illegal gambling became the goose that laid the golden egg. Hot Springs had been a wide-open city since Leo McLaughlin became mayor in 1927. Though McLaughlin left office in 1947, the amount of money generated by gambling continued to grow through the 1950s and early 1960s.

Former New York mobster Owney Madden, who had lived in Hot Springs since the 1930s, remained active until his death in 1965.

"In 1961, after a federal investigation concluded that Hot Springs was the site of the largest illegal gambling operation in the United States, Madden was summoned before the U.S. Senate Committee on Organized Crime under Sen. John L. McClellan of Arkansas," Shirley Tomkievicz wrote in the book "Arkansas Biography: A Collection of Notable Lives." "Madden repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment."

No one could have predicted in 1961 that illegal casinos would be a thing of the past by the end of the decade.

"By 1961, Hot Springs had grown to become a bustling tourist resort with millions of visitors every year," David Hill wrote for the Arkansas Times in 2019. "In addition to more than a dozen casinos, there were more than half a dozen standalone sportsbooks that took bets on horse races and sporting events, all despite the fact that gambling was technically illegal in Arkansas. Nobody in the state seemed to mind. Rich and powerful people in Arkansas frequented the city's nightclubs and casinos to watch entertainers from all over the world and rub elbows with famous people.

"The sportsbooks of Hot Springs had always received their results from Walter Annenberg's wire service through an office in New Orleans. After the mob took control of the wire, they turned the New Orleans office over to mobster Carlos Marcello. He used it........

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