The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Secret Casino: Agua Caliente, Tijuana

In 1929, a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote that outside of a United States mint, no other place on the continent let you see so much money at once. He was describing Agua Caliente, a casino resort in Tijuana, Mexico, where Californians crossed the border for the gambling and the liquor their own country had banned. This video follows the resort from its start to its end. It covers the border-town promoters who built it, a self-taught architect of about nineteen, a Gold Room with gold chips, and a Monday morning holdup that was never solved. A sixteen-year-old dancer named Rita Cansino was working the floor, and the Australian champion Phar Lap ran his only North American race on its track. The resort rose because the law stopped at the border. It fell when the law changed on both sides of it, and each change has a date and a name attached. Then there is the question of what became of the buildings, and what is still standing today. 0:00 The Casino Across the Border 2:12 The Border Barons 4:52 Four Partners and a Teenager 9:36 The Gold Room 14:08 The Monday Cadillac 15:18 The Dancing Cansinos 17:14 The Horses Go North 20:07 Cárdenas Signs 22:34 The Schoolhouse 26:27 What Is Left The Rise and Fall of Hollywood's Secret Casino: Agua Caliente, Tijuana Before Cancún and Las Vegas, America had other playgrounds. Hollywood honeymooned in Acapulco. The mob ran Havana's casinos. Families filled the Catskills every summer. Then, one by one, they emptied out. America's Lost Playgrounds tells the rise and fall of the resorts, hotels, casinos and vacation towns where Americans once went to have fun — at home and just across the border. Every episode is an investigation: real dates, real names, archive photos and the story behind the decline. 🏨 Legendary hotels and resorts 🎰 Casinos and mob-era playgrounds 🌴 Hollywood's Mexico and Cuba 🎢 Forgotten beach towns and amusement parks 📅 New episodes every Tuesday and Friday Subscribe if you want to know where America used to go — and why nobody goes there anymore.