A Man Who Preferred Working to Watching
Nevada gaming history is full of loud personalities — moguls, mobsters, and showmen who loved seeing their names in neon. Karl E. Berge wasn’t one of them. If anything, he seemed happiest when nobody was looking. He didn’t chase headlines or cultivate a public persona. He just quietly built things, ran them well, and treated people decently.
That low‑key approach is exactly why his story deserves to be told.
Early Life: From Minnesota to the West
Karl E. Berge was born on October 10, 1920, in Hastings, Minnesota, a small Mississippi River town better known for rail yards and riverboats than future Nevada casino owners. Growing up during the Depression shaped him in ways that would later show up in his management style — practical, steady, and allergic to waste.
He wasn’t born into money, and he didn’t come from a gaming family. Like many who eventually found their way to Nevada, Berge built his life step by step, learning how to work with people, run a business, and keep things moving without making a fuss.
Military Service: A Corporal in World War II
Before he ever set foot in a casino, Berge served his country.
He was a Corporal in the U.S. military during World War II, part of the generation that learned discipline, responsibility, and leadership under the most demanding circumstances imaginable.
People who later worked with him often described traits that echoed his service: Calm under pressure, steady in a crisis, and respectful but firm. He wasn’t flashy, but he was reliable. That’s a trait Nevada gaming has always valued.
Before Sparks: The Making of a Casino Man
After the war, Karl married his wife, Nancy, in 1947, and they drifted west to see the country and the West Coast and to see his wife’s relatives. In Los Angeles, Karl worked as a bartender while Nancy delivered cocktails. They eventually invested in a small bar, where Karl did everything from plumbing work to serving drinks. Nancy juggled the books and cocktails.
With some hard-earned profits, they took a vacation to Lake Tahoe and were taken with the area’s beauty, and the successful casinos. Most notably, they loved the Stateline Country Club, across the street from George’s Gateway Club and several small casinos like Dopey Norman’s and Tony’s Club. And, they never went home!
Instead, they sold their tiny bar and went to work for Nick Sahatti at the Stateline. Although the casinos closed in winter, the Berge’s stayed year-round, rationing their earnings and eventually buying the bar services part of the Country Club after Eddie Sahati passed away.
Life was good. So good that Bill Harrah from Reno offered to purchase the Stateline Club from the Sahatti family. There were months of discussions, and when the next summer season approached, the Sahattis had agreed to sell, but the bar services contract was a handshake deal, and Karl didn’t want to sell. Instead, he declined the $5,000 offer.
On several nights, Karl was followed home by a dark car that parked down the street. At the end of the week, he found an envelope in his car after work. It told him not to come back to the club and to take the cash inside as the last negotiation. He’d seen enough bar fights and “negotiations” to make what he called “the right decision.” He and Nancy took jobs at other casinos and put the cash away.
After summer ended, they returned to Los Angeles and re-entered their previous lives. Karl, who liked horse racing, ran into an old friend from Tahoe at Santa Anita in 1967. The friend piqued his interest with a story about a casino owner in Sparks (next door to Reno) looking for partners. Karl talked to Nancy. They both missed Nevada. The rest is history.
Karl and four partners put their money up and took a controlling interest in Spark’s Silver Club in 1967, and the little club at 1040 “B” Street was just what they could handle. The 7,000-square-foot casino had a small restaurant, 30 slot machines, a $25,000 Jackpot Keno game, and one blackjack table. The 35 employees were thrilled to keep their jobs, and eventually the club began making a profit. Probably for the first time since it opened in 1963.
Still, the Silver Club was a modest downtown joint, fighting with other small clubs like the Mint, and the big casino, John Ascuaga’s Nugget, directly across the street. His partners lost interest in the club’s future, and Karl bought them all out.
In 1972, Karl bought the Sparks Shoe Service next door and expanded the casino, inspired by what he watched Bill Harrah do at Lake Tahoe. He added a keno lounge and a tiny space for a single poker table. After I moved to Sparks, I could walk to the club and play cards at 10 am, if there were enough players to start the game. Karl often took a rack of chips and helped get the game started.
I also remember Karl meeting tour bus groups and him handing each player a free roll of nickels and a coin cup. On the casino floor, he was a whirling showman, touting the keno game, the poker game, and a new carousel of 95% payout slot machines as he shouted, “Hey, hey, it’s jackpot time.”
The B Street Expansion: When a Small Casino Grew Up
By the late 1970s, Berge was thinking bigger. In 1978, he owned 62% of the club, with other family members holding the remaining 38%. Many worked at the property. Downtown Sparks was still rough around the edges, but he saw potential, even with neighboring competition, as the Mint was still operating, and so were the Claim Stake, King of Clubs, and Bar West. To cement his claim on his side of the street, Karl proposed a five‑story, 200‑room hotel behind the casino — a bold move for the time. It would straddle land between “C” and “D” Streets.
City officials pushed back. Parking concerns. Shadows on nearby homes. The usual Nevada development dance.
Berge didn’t fight; he adapted, and the project became a six-floor, 209-room tower on just .89 acre of land. And then, when it was built, busy, and profitable, came the unthinkable: a three-story casino right on “B” Street costing more than $14 million.
This expansion transformed Karl’s Silver Club from a small gambling hall into a full hotel‑casino property — one of the anchors of downtown Sparks. It was aptly called Karl’s Hotel and Casino when it opened in 1984.
1984: Karl’s Hotel & Casino
After years of upgrades, the property rebranded itself to excited gamblers and enjoyed its heyday as a strong competitor in the Sparks gaming market. New players marveled at the three-story property, built with an old-victorian style to match the Spark’s City Council’s request for all properties to upgrade to match the new “B” Street name of Victorian Square.
The 70,000 square-foot building included a well-appointed casino with multiple keno stations, 390 slot machines, and nine blackjack tables. On the second floor, after a long escalator ride, gamblers found a modern sportsbook and a poker room. Also upstairs was a fancy steakhouse with very reasonable prices.
Karl continued his habit of working a 12-hour day, always hands-on with guest services and player interaction. Personally, I never met an employee who didn’t enjoy his guidance or the work environment.
He wasn’t the type to bark orders. He was the type to quietly fix a problem before anyone else noticed it existed. Unfortunately, one major problem was parking. While the Nugget across the street had ample parking along “B” Street and behind the casino, Karl’s wasn’t blessed with acres of dirt. In fact, the club struggled to meet the City’s parking demands while fighting him tooth and nail, leaving him unable to open a very expensive third floor in the new property.
Eventually, the city granted the casino 72 parking spaces (at $1 each per day), but regulations required another 500 spaces, which Karl had counted on for the third-floor opening. That never happened, although the city did sell those 72 paces and a few more (115 total) to Karl for $2 million. Unfortunately, that brought the company’s outstanding debt to nearly $18 million.
The fact that the city had dreams of a third major casino joining the Nugget and Karl’s might have affected Berge’s ability to get the land he needed for 500 more spaces. Or maybe the market just couldn’t handle the two major casinos downtown it already had. Either way, the new property quickly fell into red ink.
At the same time, two smaller casinos, the Gold Club and the Mint (which had closed but were refurbished), reopened. By that time, not even the Nugget was making a profit. Karl was in trouble. The Berge family operated the casino through their company, Phair Corp., with Karl and his wife, Nancy, as the principal owners. Spiral Corp, the landlord company, was owned by the parents and their children.
A credit line with First Interstate Bank was well-established, but after FIB foreclosed on the Mapes Casino in Reno, gaming in Northern Nevada looked bleak. Karl asked Boomtown casino owner Bob Cashell to run the Silver Club, and while the wily casino manager did well, the club still couldn’t turn a profit, nor was it expected to in the coming years. Continued road maintenance directly in front of the property didn’t help.
Hoping to keep the casino open and 600 workers employed (unlike the Mapes disaster, where workers were dismissed, without final paychecks, a week before Christmas), the Berge family relinquished all control and assets associated with the hotel and the casino property. Obviously, a crushing blow, but employees kept their jobs!
What Became of Karl’s Casino
The property went through several transformations:
1963–1967: Sparks Silver Club
1967–1972: Silver Club with Berge and partners
1973-1984: Karl’s Silver Club (Berge family)
1984–2009: Karl’s Hotel & Casino → Silver Club
2013–2015: Bourbon Square Casino
2018: Building demolished; site became the Nugget Event Center
The building is gone, but the footprint of what Berge built still shapes downtown Sparks.
Why Karl Berge Matters
Nevada gaming history is full of big personalities — mobsters, moguls, visionaries, and villains. Karl Berge wasn’t any of those. He was something rarer: a steady builder who improved a city without demanding applause.
He left Sparks better than he found it, and that’s a legacy worth remembering.
A Family Footnote
One of the few personal details that ever reached the public: Karl Berge was the paternal grandfather of actress Jena Malone.
Al W. Moe’s Interactions with Karl and his Casino
As mentioned above, I was lucky enough to see Karl in control of his small casino, and its expansion to 70,000 square feet of gaming and retail space with a 200+ room hotel right behind. It was all a pleasure.
Many good things stick with me, like the cage manager’s willingness to let me cash my buckets of quarters (I had a 60-game video route), knowing they weren’t from jackpots in the casino, and also the time I made a baseball wager in the sports book (Mark Langston pitching for the Mariners), and when I came to collect, the sports book was closed. You could cash winning tickets at the main cage, but they wouldn’t pay me the amount I expected. So, I wandered around, found Karl, and asked him why the price was wrong. He said, “Geez, I don’t know why, let’s find out.”
He probably knew, but it was his way of addressing the problem by walking me to the cage personally and asking why. The cashier called the cage manager, who told us that the ticket was regraded because I chose “action” on the game, meaning that if the listed starting pitchers changed, the bet would be adjusted rather than canceled. That way, I still got paid if it won, but at different odds. That was 40 years ago, and I still remember him taking care of me, with the original payoff amount and a comp to the steakhouse for two.
The cage was right, I was wrong, and he still took care of me.
Over the years, we met often at a baseball card shop I owned, first on “B” Street and then on Bearing Road. He had some memorabilia and cards he wanted to sell to buy presents for his grandchildren. And while he told me the story of the Tahoe bar ownership $10,000 buyout/threat and the loss of the club in Sparks, he never once blamed anyone else for his issues. That alone hits me harder than anything. Great guy.
Karl E. Berge passed away in 2003
He is buried at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley — a fitting resting place for a WWII veteran who spent much of his life contributing quietly but meaningfully to the state he made his home.
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