[Above, 1948 photo titled “Smashing Illegal Gambling Devices,” from Wisconsin State Historical Society Archives. Caption: “Destroying slot machines and other illegal gambling devices at Law Park. From L to R: John Roach, director of the state beverage and cigaret tax division; John R. Arnold, former sheriff of Dane County and deputy U.S. Marshal; Sam Swenson, Harold Schaurer, L.D. Lewis and J.G. McClellan, investigators with the state beverage and cigaret tax division and F.J. Mattingly, senior investigator.“]
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According to this short Capital Times piece on February 2, 1993:
“The Monona Terrace project will be built on slot machines. No, not on current gambling revenues, but actually on a different era of slot machines. In the 1940s, slot machines seized by state agents were chopped up and buried as part of the landfill that created Law Park. The beverage and tax agents a half-century ago had their headquarters in the Wilson Street State Office Building. A large picture capturing the agents destroying machines, found in the State Historical Society, now hangs in the office of the Division of Criminal Investigation in the Justice Department.”
These slot machines and other “illegal gambling devices” were added to residential and business refuse, MGE coal ash and cinders, construction debris, plastics, metal, glass, old newspapers, dredged lake sediments, and a plethora of other wastes that were pushed into the lake by the city to create Law Park. Older photos show waste barrels protruding from the shoreline.
Who knows what all was dumped in this landfill from the 1930s to the 1950s? What toxic chemicals are leaching from it into Lake Monona? Nobody knows. Nobody has ever measured.
See “What Else Can Hurt Lake Monona” Part I: Law Park is a landfill” for more info.
