Jack Douglass, 91; Co-Founded Club Cal Neva in Reno

Jack Douglass, 91, Nevada gambling pioneer who co-founded Reno’s Club Cal Neva, died of natural causes Wednesday at his Reno home.

Douglass, who held the oldest active casino license in the state of Nevada for many years, also developed Reno’s Comstock Hotel-Casino in 1978 and served as chairman of the board until it closed in 2000.

His long career began in the mid-1930s with an amusement games and slot machine route among the bars of central Nevada mining camps.

About 1960, he entered a partnership that bought the Riverside Hotel in Reno, which he managed for a year. Then, Douglass, Warren Nelson and others founded the Cal Neva. He later bought the Cal Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe when Frank Sinatra lost his gambling license there. Douglass sold his interest in the Cal Neva in 1986.