By 1988, Laughlin was the nation’s fourth largest gambling destination. Laughlin became a billionaire presiding over his own resort complex encompassing 1,350 rooms, a bowling center and a movie multiplex. customers spend just as much money as people who stay in our rooms,” he told The Las Vegas Review Journal in 1999.Ī high school dropout, Mr. was key: He recognized that not everybody who wanted to gamble also wanted to pay for a hotel room in Las Vegas.
Laughlin carved out his resort destination where land was cheap and parking lots for recreational vehicles could grow infinitely. (The bridge that carries visitors to and from there was also partly paid for by him.)
Today, the town has eight casino resorts, two million visitors a year, a population of more than 9,000 and, just across the river, in Bullhead City, Ariz., a jet airport, partly financed by him, that can take Boeing 737s. The spot on the Colorado River in southern Nevada that would become his gambling oasis was nothing but a dirt road and a boarded-up eight-room motel when Mr. The death was confirmed by his grandson Matt, who now runs a resort complex that Mr. Laughlin, who transformed a stretch of desert about 100 miles south of Las Vegas into a sprawling casino boomtown that he named after himself, died there, in Laughlin, Nev., on Oct.
