In 1964, 10 years after buying a gambling business in North Las Vegas, Laughlin sold it for $165,000, according to his biography posted on the resort’s website.
“I said, ‘I’m making three times what you are, so I’m out the door,’” Laughlin recalled to the Review-Journal. When Laughlin was in ninth grade, his school principal issued an ultimatum to either stay in school or stay in the slot business, where he made $500 a week. He was known to use earnings from mink trapping to buy and install slot machines at local pubs, according to the Riverside Resort’s website.
Even as a teen, he was running gambling operations. Laughlin was born in Owatonna, Minnesota. Nearly 2 million visitors travel there each year, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Situated on the lower Colorado River and along the Nevada-Arizona border, Laughlin is currently home to eight casino resorts. “When we came here there was a dirt road in here and you had to come in by way of the dam,” Laughlin told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2016 while celebrating the resort's 50th anniversary. Laughlin is credited as the architect behind the transformation of an area of dirt and weeds 100 miles (161 kilometers) south of Las Vegas into a thriving alternative to Sin City. in true Don Laughlin spirit, was still trying to make them laugh with his jokes,” Fuchs said in an email to The Associated Press.
