Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
Burnham, the roadhouse town run through a boy mayor
1908
Burnham, Illinois
Johnny Patton was 24 when Burnham first elected him mayor in 1908, and the village's dance halls, gambling rooms and roadhouses ran wide open under an arrangement with John Torrio's Chicago syndicate. A federal prosecutor called Burnham the leper of Illinois. Al Capone was a regular at the Arrowhead Inn, the biggest of the roadhouses, where the clarinettist Mezz Mezzrow played and later wrote that the syndicate owned a piece of the club and the whole town with it.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: city-level
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