After visiting Las Vegas on vacation, he arrived permanently in 1952 and bartended at the Thunderbird Hotel until he bought his own bar and restaurant in Downtown Las Vegas, which he named Laughlin’s Made Right Café. In this interview, Laughlin sits amid the antique slot machines in his office and enjoys the view as he recalls his childhood on the family farm in southern Minnesota, and talks about leaving the farm in the late 1940s for nearby Owatonna to do watchmaking and watch repairing while simultaneously running a slot machine and pinball parlor. Today, Laughlin the man continues to promote and support Laughlin the town via flood control projects and infrastructure development. The endeavor was so successful that the then-settlement of 10 to 15 people at that tiny spot on the river grew to be an unincorporated town housing more than 7,000 people in 2010. Here, where the Colorado River flows south through one of its narrowest channels, Laughlin arrived in about 1966 and purchased what would become the Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino. His office 90 miles south of Las Vegas in the eponymous town of Laughlin commands an unimpeded view of a very different landscape from that of his youth.
Minnesotan Don Laughlin landed far from the land of (more than) 10,000 lakes.
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