Don Laughlin, who turned a patch of desert into a casino mecca, dies at the age of 92

Donald J. Laughlin, who transformed a stretch of desert about 100 miles south of Las Vegas into a sprawling casino boomtown he named after himself, died there on Oct. 22 in Laughlin, Nevada. He was 92.

The death was confirmed by his grandson Matt, who now runs a resort complex that Mr Laughlin built.

The spot on the Colorado River in southern Nevada that would become his gambling oasis was nothing more than a dirt road and a boarded-up eight-room motel when Mr. Laughlin first saw it in 1964.

Today the city has eight casino resorts, two million visitors a year, a population of more than 9,000 and, across the river in Bullhead City, Arizona, a partially financed jet airport that can carry Boeing 737s. (The bridge that takes visitors to and from there was also partly paid for by him.)

Mr. Laughlin chose his resort where land was cheap and parking lots for recreational vehicles could grow indefinitely. The RV was the key: he realized that not everyone who wanted to gamble also wanted to pay for a hotel room in Las Vegas.

“We’ve noticed that RV customers are spending as much money as people staying in our rooms,” he told The Las Vegas Review Journal in 1999.

After dropping out of high school, Mr. Laughlin became a billionaire, running his own 1,350-room resort complex, a bowling center and a movie theater complex. In 1988, Laughlin was the fourth largest gambling destination in the country.

“Don Laughlin was unique,” ​​Michael Green, chairman of the history department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said by phone. “He built his own city. There’s really no one else in the industry who can say that.”

“He saw the opportunity that existed,” Professor Green added, “if he played his cards right.”

Donald Joseph Laughlin was born on May 4, 1931 on a dairy farm run by his parents, Raymond and Olive (Benalleck) Laughlin, outside Owatonna, Minnesota, about 65 miles south of Minneapolis. His father was also a part-time truck driver.

Taking risks seemed natural to Donald. As a teenager, he collected money from catching mink and muskrats and used it to buy mail-order vending machines, which he installed himself in local pubs.

Demand was high and he was soon earning $500 a week (almost $7,000 in today’s terms).

The principal of the one-room schoolhouse where he attended high school was not amused. “He said he had to leave the gambling business or drop out of high school,” Mr. Laughlin told The Review-Journal. “I said, ‘I make three times as much as you, so I’m going out.'”

He moved with his young wife to Las Vegas in 1953, the only place in the United States where slot machines were legal at the time. He worked as a bartender and attended a school for card and dice dealers in the evenings. By 1954, he had saved enough to buy a restaurant in North Las Vegas, the 101 Club. He got a gambling license, posted “families welcome” and “steak and eggs” on the sign and started playing what he believed was the only blackjack game in the area.

But Mr. Laughlin was restless. He learned to fly – it became his passion – and began exploring the state in search of an alternative to Las Vegas. He found it at the very southern tip of Nevada, a place of mountains, desert and river where the state of Arizona meets California. A failing bar and motel on a dirt road on the Colorado River seemed like the ticket.

He sold the 101 Club for $165,000 and put down $35,000 cash for that motel and six acres on the Colorado River, ultimately paying a total of $235,000. Something told him that the isolation of the place would be an advantage: as soon as gamblers reached him, he had them in his grasp.

In 1966, Mr. Laughlin reopened the motel as the Riverside Resort. He advertised unlimited chicken dinners for 98 cents, 12 slot machines and two gambling tables. He and his family lived in four of the motel’s eight rooms. One day a postal inspector told him that he could not continue receiving mail if the town did not have a name. The inspector introduced Laughlin.

The confluence of three states was a blessing, with a never-ending stream of motorists traveling between them. He continued to expand his operations, adding 48 rooms in 1972, 52 rooms three years later, a 14-story tower in 1983, and another 307-room tower in 1986.

“He didn’t go with the flow,” said Bruce L. Woodbury, a longtime county commissioner in Clark County, Nevada. “He had his own ideas. He was independent. He didn’t care what other people thought.”

In 1988, when he was a reporter for The New York Times visited, Mr. Laughlin’s resort was worth $167 million. He spent $5 million on a bridge over the Colorado River to Bullhead City, which would make it easier for employees and customers to reach his gaming machines. He cleverly placed one end of the bridge near his parking spot.

That spring, President Ronald Reagan brought Mr. Laughlin, not usually a major political player, to the White House to recognize his contributions to the area.

Mr. Laughlin’s wife, Betty, died in 2022. In addition to his grandson Matt, he is survived by three children, Dan, Ron and Erin Laughlin; a sister, Patricia Miller; four other grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren.

Mr. Laughlin worked fourteen hours a day well into his eighties, mingling with employees and customers in what is now called Don Laughlin’s Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino. “He was always there on the casino floor,” said Malibu Diaz, executive director.

And yet he shunned the spotlight that more notable players like Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson gravitated toward in Las Vegas.

“He did his business off the beaten track,” Professor Green said. ‘You didn’t see stories about him in the newspaper, and he liked that. The generation he was part of that came into the business did not want personal attention.”

Ms. Diaz said of the venture, “This is all an opportunity that has paid off.”

Kirsten Noyes research contributed.